Definition of "stop short"
verb
third-person singular simple present stops short, present participle stopping short, simple past and past participle stopped short
(usually with of) To voluntarily cease an attempt to reach a certain point.
Quotations
Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter III, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915