† 1. The process of abbreviating; abbreviation, shortening. Obs.
1659. Hammond, On Psalms iii. 7. 26. The abbreviature or apocope hath no example.
1673. Jer. Taylor, Suppl. to Serm. for Year (1678), 131. I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things.
† 2. An abbreviated or shortened state, condition, or form; shortness. Obs.
1614. Selden, Titles of Honor, 114. Cultus alienus siue extraneus, or Idolatrie, which they commonly express by [Heb.] in abbreviature.
1650. Jer. Taylor, Holy Dying, i. § 3. 27 (1727). God in pity … hath reduced our misery to an abbreviature.
3. An abbreviated or abridged copy; an abridgment, compendium, epitome, or abstract.
1650. Jer. Taylor, Holy Dying, iii. § 9. 4. There are certain compendiums or abbreviatures and shortenings of religion, fitted to several states.
1755. Carte, Hist. Eng., IV. 55. To bestow their time in the fathers and councils rather than on compendiums and abbreviatures.
1812. Coleridge, The Friend, V. vii. 316 (1867). It is indeed little more than an abbreviature of the preceding observation and the deductions therefrom.
4. An abbreviated or contracted form of a word or phrase; a contraction, an abbreviation.
c. 1630. Jackson, Creed, viii. 27, Wks. VIII. 116. From mistake of letters or abbreviatures by the transcribers.
1682. Sir T. Browne, Chr. Mor. (1756), 35. The hand of Providence writes often by abbreviatures.
1724. Wodrow, Corresp. (1843), III. 149. The reading was easy to me, though some abbreviatures stopped me a little.
