Abbreviation

How to spell abbreviation

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce abbreviation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does abbreviation mean?

1. nounA shortened form of a word or phrase used in place of the full version.

Abbreviation in a sentence

• The report defined every abbreviation on its first page.

• "approx" is a common abbreviation for the word approximately.

Where does abbreviation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin abbreviare, meaning 'to make short' or 'to shorten', which was formed from the prefix ad- 'to' (assimilated to ab- before the b) joined to brevis, the ordinary Latin adjective for 'short' or 'brief'. The same brevis root sits inside familiar English words such as 'brief', 'brevity', and even 'abridge', so the family resemblance is a useful memory hook. The action noun abbreviatio described the act of cutting something down in length, and English took it in through Old French and directly from Latin during the late 1400s, first in the general sense of shortening and then specifically for a shortened written form of a word. The trickiest part of the spelling is the doubled b, which survives from the assimilation of the Latin prefix, while there is only a single later consonant, so the safe rule is two b's near the start and a single v before the ending. Remembering 'brevis means short' explains both why the word looks the way it does and why it has only one r.

How the word is built

• ab- (to, towards)
• brevi- (from brevis: short)
• -ation (noun of action)