For abbreviations in Wiktionary, see Category:Abbreviations

Noun

Singular abbreviation

Plural abbreviations

abbreviation (plural abbreviations)

1. A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, used to represent the whole: Dr.
2. The act or result of shortening or reducing.
3. (music) One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demi-semiquavers, or hemi-demi-semiquavers.
4. (mathematics) Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning "short") is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase. For example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr. or abbrev.

In strict analysis, abbreviations should not be confused with contractions or acronyms (including initialisms), with which they share some semantic and phonetic functions, though all three are connoted by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance.. However, normally acronyms are regarded as a subgroup of abbreviations (e.g. by the Council of Science Editors).