the superlative form of short; smaller in length or duration than all others being compared.
From Old English 'sceort,' related to Old Norse 'skortr' (deficiency). The superlative ending '-est' comes from Proto-Germanic and was used in English for over a thousand years.
The word 'short' is paradoxically one of the shortest words in English, yet it's also incredibly ancient—it appears in Beowulf and has cognates in almost every Germanic language, showing how universally humans care about size and distance.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.