Noun

(en noun)

The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.

(linguistics) 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.

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

(music) 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.

the phrase "civil rights" is an abbreviation for a whole complex of relationships. - Pres. Truman's comittee on Civil Rights

(biology) Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.

(mathematics) Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.

Noun

(-)

(rare, humorous) The excessive use of abbreviations.

* 1952 , Science progress (volume 40, issues 157-160)

We are evidently in for a bad patch of abbreviationitis . However, in the matter of chemical mechanisms we do seem to have passed the stage which could be referred to in general as OGIAGAA (one guess is as good as another).

* 1954 , British journal of photography (volume 101)

In the future, if this abbreviationitis continues, all makes of cameras and apparatus will be known by symbols and numbers instead of names. This regimentation will knock all the nonsense out of shopping.

* {{quote-news, year=2009, date=June 14, author=William Safire, title=Dictionaurus, work=New York Times citation

, passage=(The New World guys chop off the ically ; maybe this lexie taciturnity led to the younger generation’s rampant abbreviationitis .) }}