ABBRE'VIATE, verb transitive [from Latin abbrevio, brevio, from brevis, short] 1. To shorten; to make shorter by contracting the parts. [In this sense, not much used, nor often applied to material substances.] 2. To shorten; to abridge by the omission or defalcation of a part; to reduce to a smaller compass; as to abbreviate a writing. 3. In mathematics, to reduce fractions to the lowest terms.
Source: Webster's 1828 American Dictionary ↗ · public-domain · returned verbatim, no AI