Abri'dgment. n.s. [abregement, French.]

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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