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157 
As one condemn’d to leap a precipice. 
Who sees before his eyes the depth below, 
Stops short. Dry den. 
Defective as to quantity. 
When the fleece is shorn, 
When their defenceless limbs the brambles tear, 
Short of their wool, and naked from the sheer. Dryden, 
Narrow; contracted.—Men of wit and parts, but of short 
thoughts and little meditation, are apt to distrust every thing 
for a fancy. Burnet. 
They, since their own short understandings reach 
No farther than the present, think ev’n the wise 
Like them disclose the secrets of their breasts. Rowe. 
Brittle; friable.—His flesh is not firm, but short and 
tasteless. Walton. —Marl from Derbyshire was very fat, 
though it had so great a quantity of sand, that it was so short, 
that wet you could not work it into a ball, or make it hold 
together. Mortimer. —Not bending. 
The lance broke short, the beast then bellow’d loud. 
And his strong neck to a new onset bow’d. Dryden. 
Laconic; brief: as, a short answer. 
SHORT, s. A summary account.—To see whole bodies 
of men breaking a constitution ; in short, to be encompassed 
with the greatest dangers from without, to be torn by many 
virulent factions within, then to be secure and senseless, are 
the most likely symptoms, in a state, of sickness unto death. 
Swift. 
SHORT, adv. [Only used in composition.] Not 
long. 
Beauty and youth, 
And sprightly hope and sho /■/-enduring joy. Dryden. 
To SHORT, v. n. [shorten. Germ, je-pcypcan, Sax.] 
To fail; to be deficient; to decrease. Unused.— His syght 
wasteth, his wytte mynysheth, his lyf shorteth. The Book 
of Good Manners. 
To SHORT, v. a. [pcypban, Sax.] To abbreviate ; to 
shorten. Unused. —Sorrow shorteth the life of many a 
man. Chaucer. 
SHORT (Thomas), a physician of the early part of the 
last century, and the author of many works relating to 
chemistry, meteorology, and medicine. Few particulars 
are recorded of his life, which seems to have been spent 
more in the pursuit of science, than in the exercise of his 
profession. He was a member of the Royal Society. The 
following are the principal works which he left, “ Me¬ 
moir on the Natural History of Medicinal Waters,” 1725. 
“ A Dissertation on Tea,” 1730. “ Natural History of 
the Mineral Waters of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Derby¬ 
shire,” 1733. “ A General Chronological History of the 
Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors, &c., for the Space of 
250 Years,” 1749. “ Discourses on Tea, Sugar, Milk, 
made Wines, Spirits, Punch, Tobacco, &c.” 1749. “ New 
'Observations, Natural, Moral, Civil, Political, and Medical, 
on Bills of Mortality,” 1750. See Eloy. Diet. Hist, and 
the Works of Short. 
SHORT (James), an eminent optician, was bom at Edin¬ 
burgh in the year 1710. At the age of ten he lost his 
parents, and being left in a state of indigence, he was ad¬ 
mitted into Heriot’s Hospital, where he soon shewed a fine 
mechanical genius, by constructing for himself a number of 
curious articles with common knives, or such other instru¬ 
ments as he could procure. At the age of twelve he was 
removed from the hospital to the High-school, where he 
shewed a considerable Taste for classical learning, and he 
soon became at the head of his forms. He was intended 
for the church, but after attending a course of theological 
lectures, he gave up all thoughts of a profession, which he 
found little suited to his talents, and from this period he 
devoted his whole time to mathematical and mechanical 
pursuits. He was pupil to the celebrated Maclaurin, who 
perceiving the bent of his genius, encouraged him to pro¬ 
secute those particular studies for which he seemed best 
Vol. XXIII. No. 1561. 
SHO 
qualified by nature. Under the eye of his preceptor lie 
began, in 1732, to construct Gregorian telescopes; and, as 
the professor observed, by attending to the figure of his 
specula, he was enabled to give them larger apertures, and 
to carry them to greater perfection, than had ever been done 
before him. 
In 1736 Mr. Short was invited to London by queen 
Caroline, to instruct William, duke of Cumberland, in the 
mathematics ; and on his appointment to this office, he was 
elected a member of the Royal Society, and patronized by 
the earls of Macclesfield and Morton. In the year 1739 
he accompanied the former to the Orkney islands, where 
he was employed in making a survey of that part of Scot¬ 
land. On his return to London he established himself as 
an optician, and in 1743, he was commissioned by Lord 
Thomas Spencer to make a reflector of twelve-feet focus, 
for which he received 600 guineas. He afterwards made 
several other telescopes of the same focal distance, with 
improvements and higher magnifiers: and in 1752 he com¬ 
pleted one for the king of Spain, for which, with the whole 
apparatus, he received 1200/. This was the noblest instru¬ 
ment of the kind that had ever been constructed, and has 
probably not been surpassed, unless by the grand telescopes 
manufactured by Dr. Herschel. 
Mr. Short was accustomed to visit the place of his na¬ 
tivity once every two or three years during his residence in 
London, and in the year 1766 he paid his last visit to Scot¬ 
land. He died in June 1768, after a very short illness, 
when he was in the 58th year of his age. 
SHORT Sails, in a Man of War, are the same with 
fighting sails, being the fore-sail, main-sail, and fore-top¬ 
sail, which are all that are used in fight, lest the rest should 
be fired and spoiled : besides the trouble of managing them 
when a ship gives chase to another. 
SIIORTDA'TED, adj. Having little time to run.—The 
course of thy short-dated life. Sandys. 
To SHO'RTEN, v. a. [Sax. peyptan.] To make short, 
either in time or space.—To shorten its way to knowledge, 
and make each perception more comprehensive, it binds 
them into bundles. Locke. —To contract; to abbreviate. 
We shorten'd days to moments by love’s art. 
Whilst our two souls 
Perceiv’d no passing time, as if a part 
Our love had been of still eternity. Suckling. 
To confine; to hinder from progression.—Here, where 
the subject is so fruitful, I am shortened by my chain, and 
can only see what is forbidden me to reach. Dryden ,—To 
lop. 
Dishonest with lopt arms the youth appears, 
Spoil’d of his nose, and shorten'd of his ears. Dryden. 
SIIORTFORD, q. d. fore-close, an ancient custom in 
the city of Exeter, when the lord of the fee cannot be an¬ 
swered rent due to him out of his tenement, and no distress 
can be levied for the same. The lord is then to come to the 
tenement, and there take a stone, or some other dead thing, 
off the tenement, and bring it before the mayor and bailiff, 
and thus he must do seven quarter-days successively, and if 
on the seventh quarter-day the lord is not satisfied his rent 
and arrears, then the tenement shall be adjudged to the lord 
to hold the same a year and a day; and forthwith proclama¬ 
tion is to be made in the court, that if any man claims any 
title to the said tenement, he must appear within the year and 
day next following, and satisfy the lord of the said rent and 
arrears: but if no appearance be made, and the rent not 
paid, the lord comes again to the court, and prays that, ac¬ 
cording to the custom, the said tenement be adjudged to him 
in his demesne as of fee, which is done accordingly, so that 
the lord hath from thenceforth the said tenement, with the 
appurtenances, to him and his heirs. 
SHORTGRAVE, a hamlet of England, in Essex; 2 miles 
from Saffron Walden. 
SHO'RTHAND, s. A method of writing in compendious 
characters. 
2 S l n 
