Definition of "abbreviate"

abbreviate¹

/ə.ˈbɹiː.vi.eɪt/

verb
third-person singular simple present abbreviates, present participle abbreviating, simple past and past participle abbreviated
1. (obsolete, transitive) To shorten by omitting parts or details.
  Quotations
  It is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off.
  1597, Francis Bacon, Essays
2. (obsolete, intransitive) To speak or write in a brief manner.
3. (transitive) To make shorter; to shorten (in time); to abridge; to shorten by ending sooner than planned.
  Quotations
  But as delivery schedules have dwindled into hours, even the gigantic warehouse full of stuff in a central place such as the triangle is proving insufficient. Now, companies also need smaller distribution centres around the country, to respond rapidly to orders and to abbreviate the last mile as much as possible.
  2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎
4. (transitive) To reduce a word or phrase by means of contraction or omission to a shorter recognizable form.
5. (transitive, mathematics) To reduce to lower terms, as a fraction.

abbreviate²

/əˈbɹi.vi.ət/

adjective
comparative more abbreviate, superlative most abbreviate
1. (obsolete) Abbreviated; abridged; shortened.
  Quotations
  The abbreviate form has never been able to recover that shock.
  1892, J. J. Earle, The philology of the English tongue
2. (biology) Having one part relatively shorter than another or than the ordinary type.
noun
plural abbreviates
1. (obsolete, Scotland) An abridgment.