abbreviation

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.
2. (countable, uncountable)A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase used to represent the whole, using omission of letters, and sometimes substitution of letters, or duplication of initial letters to signify plurality, including signs such as +, =, @.

   “Hants is an abbreviation of Hampshire.”

   “Americans, for example, call newcomers to Antarctica “fingies”, which comes from FNGs – a borrowed military abbreviation that means “Fucking New Guy”.”

3. (countable, uncountable)The process of abbreviating.
4. (countable, uncountable)A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.
5. (countable, uncountable)One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.
6. (countable, uncountable)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.”

7. (countable, uncountable)Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.
8. (countable, uncountable)Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.