verb · neutral
shorten
UK/ˈʃɔːtən/US/ˈʃɔːrtən/SHORT·en
make something shorter in length, time, or duration
Examples
“I need to shorten my essay to meet the word limit.”
“The new road shortened the journey by 20 minutes.”
“They shortened the training course from six weeks to three weeks.”
Band 8 sentence
“To meet the revised deadline, managers decided to shorten the remaining timeline by reorganising tasks.”
Collocations
- shorten the commute
- shorten the waiting time
- shorten the course
- shorten a speech
Word family
Common mistakes
They shortened the number of students in each class.→They reduced the number of students in each class.
We need to shorten more the working hours.→We need to shorten the working hours further.
Say it for a higher band
5make shorter→6cut→7+shorten
Synonyms
reduce
cut
Easily confused
reduce
“The company decided to reduce the number of temporary staff.”
Related words
Learn this word with the rest of its set, and get reminded at the right time.
In -en
Learn it with its set