abbreviation

1. (linguistics) 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 +, =, @.Examples: "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”."countableuncountable

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

3. (music) One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.countableuncountable

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

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