short short

See also: short shorts

English

Noun

short short (plural short shorts)

1. Short for short short story.
   • 1945, Mary Anne Howard, Fifty Short Shorts: an Omnibus of Short Stories, Cleveland: World Publishing Company, →OCLC, front cover:

     Fifty Short Shorts. An omnibus of entertaining short short stories by America’s favorite tellers of tales

   • 1982, Irving Howe, “Introduction”, in Irving Howe, Ilana Wiener Howe, editors, Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories, page xvi:

     Verga’s Wolf cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy’s Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.

   • 1986, Robert Shapard, “Introduction”, in Robert Shapard, James Thomas, editors, Sudden Fiction: American Short-short Stories, page xiv:

     The most often cited example of a classical short-short, Petronius’ “The Widow of Ephesus,” is no rude prototype.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:short shorts.
2. A very short film, typically of a length less than three minutes.