King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “shorten”

缩短
suō duǎn
Traditional: 縮短
to shorten; to reduce; to curtail

The closest CC-CEDICT match for shorten is 缩短 (suō duǎn), defined as: to shorten; to reduce; to curtail.

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

缩 suō
to withdraw, to shrink, to pull back; abbreviation
radical 120 ⽷ · 14 strokes
短 duǎn
brief, short; deficient, lacking
radical 111 ⽮ · 12 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “shorten”

WordPinyinMeaning
弄短nòng duǎnto shorten; shortening
撱tuǒclip; shorten
緛ruǎn(archaic) to shorten

Related words

Other words that share a character with 缩短.

WordPinyinMeaning
缩小 (縮小)suō xiǎoto reduce; to decrease; to shrink
压缩 (壓縮)yā suōto compress; compression
收缩 (收縮)shōu suōto pull back; to shrink
缩写 (縮寫)suō xiěabbreviation; to abridge
紧缩 (緊縮)jǐn suō(economics) to reduce; to curtail
短期duǎn qīshort-term
短片duǎn piànshort film; video clip
短暂 (短暫)duǎn zànof short duration; brief; momentary

See also: Japanese symbol for “shorten”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.

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