shorted

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of short.

   A loose connection shorted the amplifier in the middle of the show.

   The battery had shorted, leaving the device completely dead.

   Note

   One regular form does every past-tense job for the verb short, and that verb covers a lot of ground. In electronics it works both ways: a loose wire shorted the amplifier, or the amplifier simply shorted. Informally, a customer gets shorted on change. In finance, a trader has shorted a stock. Context picks the meaning, and it also separates all of these from the adjective for wearing shorts.

2. 2
   adjective

   Dressed in shorts rather than in clothing that covers the legs.

   Girls sat in girls' laps; girls sat on the floor, as if at a party; standing girls lined all the walls; athletic girls sat on the hall's Tudor rafters, swinging their shorted legs.

   2010, Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

   Note

   An adjective built from the garment rather than from the verb. In Randall Jarrell's Pictures from an Institution, athletic girls perch on Tudor rafters, "swinging their shorted legs." It names a state of dress rather than a degree, so it takes no "more" or "most." Because it shares a spelling with the electrical past tense, it reads most clearly where clothing is plainly the subject.

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