Shortlist

How to spell shortlist

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shortlist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shortlist mean?

1. nounA reduced list of selected candidates or options chosen from a larger group for final consideration.
2. verbTo place a candidate or option on a shortlist for final consideration.

Shortlist in a sentence

• noun

  The panel narrowed forty applicants down to a shortlist of six.

• verb

  The committee agreed to shortlist four candidates for the role.

• noun

  Her novel made the shortlist for the national fiction prize.

• verb

  Editors will shortlist the strongest entries before the judges decide.

Where does shortlist come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a relatively modern English compound, joining two very old native words. 'Short' descends from Old English 'sceort', meaning brief or limited in extent, while 'list' came into English from Old French 'liste', a strip or border, which earlier traced back to a Germanic root meaning an edge or band of material; from the idea of a strip on which names were written, 'list' came to mean an enumeration of items. The two were welded together in early twentieth century British usage to describe a reduced selection of candidates drawn from a larger field of applicants. The noun came first, and the verb meaning 'to place on such a list' followed naturally, as English often turns nouns into verbs. The spelling is entirely regular: there is no hidden letter, and the only real trap is whether to write it as one word, which is now the settled standard, rather than two words or a hyphenated form.

How the word is built

• short (limited in number)
• list (an itemised series of names); a transparent compound