{
  "id": "short.length",
  "term": "short",
  "sense": "length",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 5,
  "arena": "short",
  "domain": "everyday",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "having less length than is usual",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "length.spatial",
      "small.size",
      "usual.common"
    ],
    "interaction": "the length of a thing is compared to what is typical, and found to be less than usual",
    "novel_properties": [
      "relative shortness",
      "deviation below typical extent",
      "contextual smallness in length"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Tokyo Metro Ginza Line trains are 16 meters long, shorter than most rapid transit cars worldwide.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "The dwarf planet Ceres is 950 km wide, much shorter in diameter than Earth's Moon.",
      "domain": "astronomy"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2023, Norway's average male height was 180 cm, making men under 170 cm short by national standards.",
      "domain": "demographics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "small.size",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "long.size",
      "note": "contrasts-with",
      "type": "contrasts-with"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "concise.linguistic",
    "fast.speed",
    "quick.speed",
    "soon.temporal",
    "sudden.temporal"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "short",
    "shorter",
    "shortest"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "definition",
      "note": "added missing 'usual.common' as constitutive component; definition adjusted slightly to reflect reliance on usualness without using term 'short' or self-referential forms"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-short.length"
}