Abri'dgment. n.s. [abregement, French.]
- The contraction of a larger work into a small compass.
Surely this commandment containeth the law and the prophets; and, in this one word, is the abridgment of all volumes of scripture. Hooker, b. ii. § 5.
Myself have play'd
The int'rim, by remembering you 'tis past;
Then brook abridgment, and your eyes advance
After your thoughts, straight back again to France? Shakespeare's Henry V.Idolatry is certainly the first-born of folly, the great and leading paradox; nay, the very abridgment and sum total of all absurdities. South's Sermons.
- A diminution in general.
All trying, by a love of littleness,
To make abridgments, and to draw to less,
Even that nothing, which at first we were. Donne. - Restraint, or abridgment of liberty.
The constant desire of happiness, and the constraint it puts upon us, no body, I think, accounts an abridgment of liberty, or at least an abridgment of liberty, to be complained of. Locke