short and sweet

Slang Dictionary

short definition


  1. n.
    a small drink of hard liquor or of beer. : I'll have a short and a pack of cigarettes.
  2. mod.
    having to do with a single drink of undiluted liquor. : I'll take mine short, innkeeper.
  3. n.
    a purchase of drugs that counts or weighs out less than the amount agreed upon. : You gave me a short. Fix it now, or this thing goes off accidentally in your ear.
  4. tv.
    to give someone less of something than was agreed upon. : They shorted us on the last order, so we switched suppliers.
  5. n.
    a car. (Streets.) : Man, that's some short you got!
  6. n.
    the sale of borrowed shares of stock; a short sale. (Securities markets.) : There is a lot of covering of shorts this week. After that the market is in for a steady decline.
  7. tv.
    to sell borrowed stock. (Securities markets.) : The way the deficit is running, I'd short the whole market.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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American Heritage
Idioms & Phrases

short and sweet

Satisfyingly brief and pertinent, as in When we asked about the coming merger, the chairman's answer was short and sweetit wasn't going to happen. This expression was already proverbial in 1539, when it appeared in Richard Taverner's translation of Erasmus's Adagia. Over the years it was occasionally amplified, as in James Kelly's Scottish Proverbs (1721): "Better short and sweet than long and lax."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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