short circuit

• short-circuit

short + circuit

short circuit (plural short circuits)

1. (electrical engineering) A usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it.

• short

short circuit (third-person singular simple present short circuits, present participle short circuiting, simple past and past participle short circuited)

1. (transitive) To cause a short circuit in.
2. (intransitive) To undergo a short circuit.
3. (transitive, by extension) To force termination of an ongoing process before its natural conclusion, by bypassing one or more intermediary steps.
   • 1998, Catherine Nickerson, The Web of Iniquity:

     [H]is temporarily successful attempt to smear Redfield is an effort to short-circuit the narrative into premature and mistaken resolution.

   • 2002, Jim Kasper, Short Cycle Selling: Beating Your Competitors in the Sales Race:

     You do not need to follow your entire sales cycle if the customer wants to short-circuit it for you.

   • 2003, Gina Hens-Piazza, Nameless, Blameless, and Without Shame: Two Cannibal Mothers Before a King:

     My mother, determined to short-circuit my outcry, would match my objections by pointing out an inherent reward for doing such work.

4. (transitive, by extension) To impede or disrupt.
   • 2016 November 28, Mike Vorkunov, “Despite Flash of Rose’s Prime, Knicks Are Dazed by Westbrook and Thunder”, in The New York Times‎:

     At times, the Knicks’ offense looked short-circuited. Anthony, despite his cold hand, kept shooting. / “They all feel good, to be honest with you,” Anthony said. “It wasn’t long, it wasn’t short, they were bouncing off the rim, they were chippers, the same shot I hit all the time so I can’t stop taking my shots.”

5. (transitive, computing) To terminate a loop before the declared termination condition is met, or a conditional before all conditions have been tested for.
   • 2002, Paul Kimmel, Visual Basic.Net Unleashed:

     For example, to short-circuit the "LoggedIn()" or "LogIn()" "if" conditional, replace the "Or" with "OrElse" and the statement is interpreted to mean "if not logged in, then log in".

   • 2002, Jose Mojico, C# and VB.NET Conversion Pocket Reference:

     If you would like to short-circuit, you must replace "And" with the "AndAlso" keyword and "Or" with the "OrElse" keyword, as follows....

   • 2006: Jay Hillard & Stephen Teilhet, C# Cookbook

     The "Demand" is done to ensure that you have indeed been granted this permission before using the "Assert" to short-circuit the stackwalk.

• Senses 3 and 4 usually use the hyphenated spelling short-circuit.

• short out

• short circuit operator