Meaning

• The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.

• A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, used to represent the whole, utilizing omission of letters, and sometimes substitution of letters, or duplication of initial letters to signify plurality, including signs such as +, =, @.

• The process of abbreviating.

• A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.

• One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.

• Any convenient short form used as a substitution for an understood or inferred whole.

• Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.

• Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.