A few days ago
The 17th Angel

Abbreviating means to shorten, right? so why is it such a long word?

this was brought up in my Accounting II Class and it gave me an excuse to check my e-mail at school so please answer seriously.

Top 7 Answers
A few days ago
Fairy

Favorite Answer

Abbreviating comes from the Latin word “abbreviationem” which is itself a long one. However, it doesn’t matter whether it’s long or not, as far as it allows us to shorten other words
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A few days ago
derfini
I’m guessing it is because it is a description verb rather than just a word. And abbreviating can’t always be used comfortably in place of shorten. The word abbreviation is a long way also to describe Mr or Mrs.
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A few days ago
sweetie29
It doesn’t make sense if it is long or short words as long as the most important is the word meaning itself.
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A few days ago
Bart S
because it is built around the Latin word for ‘short’ or ‘brief’ – “brevis”. English likes to add bits before and after the ‘stem’ to show whether it’s a noun or verb and so on, so it basically got longer in the anglicization!
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A few days ago
Anonymous
No particular reason. Why is “tall” such a short word?
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A few days ago
MH
It’s a long word so that it can be abbr. itself – makes it useful, I suppose.
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A few days ago
deus c
idk. another one why is the word “long” shorter than the word “short”?
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