Short shrift definition is - barely adequate time for confession before execution. How to use short shrift in a sentence. Easy-to-use free business glossary with over 20,000 terms. Concise, clear, and comprehensive.

1. Short Shift Jobs
2. Define Short Shift
3. Short Shifter Wrx
4. Short Shift Kit

Do you give someone short shrift or short shift? Is there a difference? Whichever is correct, is it a medieval version of short-sheeting a person, but with monk’s robes, instead of sheets? What on earth is shrift, and can it be long as well as short? It’s fascinating how many questions one can have about an increasingly archaic term.

But you should be able to make quick work of it.

You give short shrift to a person or situation (or can make short shrift of something), not short shift. While the words short and shift may be found used together, it generally is without the fixed set of meanings that short shrift has, and is not something we would define. And no, there is no real connection between giving someone short shrift and short-sheeting their bed.

Short shrift has a small handful of possible meanings. The earliest one is “barely adequate time for confession before execution”; more recent senses are “little or no attention or consideration” (as in ‘I gave him short shrift’) or “quick work,” which is usually found in the phrase make short shrift of.

The use of the confessional sense of short shrift goes back to the 16th century.

….he tooke a preeste at auenture & made a shorte shrift, for a longer would not bee suffred, the protectoure made so muche haste to his dyner, whiche might not goo to it till this murther were dooen for sauing of his vngracious othe.
— John Harding, The Chronicle of Ihon Hardyng in Metre, 1543

If villain, feedest thou me with Ifs & ands, go fetch me a Priest, make a short shrift, and dispatch him quickly For by the blessed Saint Paule I sweare, I will not dine till I see the traitors head.
— Anon. The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, 1594

The extended uses of short shrift, those which do not explicitly refer to a brief confession before dying, are now somewhat more common than the original one.

'If I judged them, I'd give them short shrift!' cried Moore; 'but I mean to let them quite alone this bout, to give them rope enough, certain that in the end they will hang themselves.”
— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley 1849

'Here is a spy of the enemy, General,' said the Sergeant.
'Make short shrift of him! We have no time for courtmartials now.”
— J. B. Jones, Border War, 1859

Short Shift Jobs

Now turning to the most important questions, let’s look a what shrift is and whether or not it can be long. A shrift is “a remission of sins pronounced by a priest in the sacrament of reconciliation,” or, more generally, a confession, which explains the earliest sense of short shrift. Etymologically, shrift comes from the Old English word scrīfan, meaning “to shrive.” Shrive means “to free from guilt,” or “to administer the sacrament of reconciliation to,” and comes from the Latin scribere (“to write”). Scribere is the source of both scribble and short shrift.

But can a shrift be long? Well, sure, at least in the sense that anything that may be described as short may be lengthened and made long.

But now thou art in great peril of death and must confess; yet do not overlook any of thy lesser sins through overmuch haste, for we have time for a long shrift ere our riders can be here.
— Frederick Scarlett, Melcombe Manor, 1875

Kill or be killed was the rule of law, and the killer had no long shrift from the law.
— Ernest Bowen-Rowlands, Judgment of Death, 1924

The use of long shrift is very uncommon, and, when found, often seems to be an attempt at punning on short shrift. It’s not wrong to put these words together, but neither is it a fixed phrase. Which means you can give it whatever kind of shrift you want.

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Short shifting^[1] is a driving technique in which the gear is changed up before reaching maximum engine RPM or, more precisely, the acceleration optimized RPM shift-point. By short shifting, the engine does not reach its power band, and therefore maximum vehicle acceleration is not attained for the gear from which the short shift was performed.

In racing, short-shifting is a technique intended to avoid losing valuable acceleration time changing gears later. Although this means not being able to accelerate using the engine's peak power at the moment of the gear change, total acceleration overtime may be greater as no acceleration can happen during the gear change. This can aid overtaking by ensuring that the car is in the right gear in anticipation of a maneuver.

The most common reason for a short-shift in day-to-day driving is to improve fuel economy. By keeping the engine at the lower end of its RPM range less fuel is consumed. This is especially common in 'torquey' vehicles, vehicles whose engine torque curve peaks at lower RPM than the power curve, because the higher torque at low RPM allows for better acceleration characteristics without winding the engine up into its powerband. Many diesel truck drivers practice a specific type of short-shifting called progressive shifting, wherein the RPM shift point is increased with each gear but is still short of the power band.

Define Short Shift

Another reason is to intentionally reduce power and/or torque to improve traction in sub-optimal road conditions. For example, applying full engine power to the drive-wheels on wet or icy roads may cause the wheels to slip. Likewise, short-shifting can help maintain vehicle stability through bends by avoiding an unsettling shift in balance mid-corner.

References[edit]

Short Shifter Wrx

1. ^'Short Shifting'. ModernRacer.com. Retrieved 24 July 2017.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)

External links[edit]

Short Shift Kit