Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To shorten or reduce: synonym: shorten.
  • transitive verb To shorten (a number) by dropping one or more digits after the decimal point.
  • transitive verb To replace (the edge of a crystal) with a plane face.
  • adjective Appearing to terminate abruptly, as a leaf of a tulip tree or a coiled gastropod shell that lacks a spire.
  • adjective Truncated.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To reduce in size or quantity by cutting; cut down; maim.
  • In crystallography, to cut off an angle or edge by a plane section.
  • Truncated.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Appearing as if cut off at the tip.
  • transitive verb To cut off; to lop; to maim.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To shorten something as if by cutting off part of it.
  • verb mathematics To shorten a decimal number by removing trailing (or leading) digits; to chop.
  • verb geometry To replace a corner by a plane (or to make a similar change to a crystal).
  • adjective truncated
  • adjective botany, anatomy Having an abrupt termination.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb approximate by ignoring all terms beyond a chosen one
  • verb make shorter as if by cutting off
  • verb replace a corner by a plane
  • adjective terminating abruptly by having or as if having an end or point cut off

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin truncāre, truncāt-, from truncus, trunk; see terə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin truncātus, perfect passive participle of truncō ("maim, reduce to a trunk"); see trunk as a verb.

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Examples

  • But in January 2011, HCL said, News International asked whether HCL was capable of helping "truncate" - meaning delete - "a particular database" in the e-mail system.

    NYT > Home Page By SARAH LYALL 2012

  • But in January 2011, HCL said, News International asked whether HCL was capable of helping "truncate" - meaning delete - "a particular database" in the e-mail system.

    NYT > Home Page By SARAH LYALL 2012

  • But in January 2011, HCL said, News International asked whether HCL was capable of helping "truncate" - meaning delete - "a particular database" in the e-mail system.

    NYT > Home Page By SARAH LYALL 2012

  • Alternatively you could always press the "truncate" button which will remove all chats from the database.

    phpBB.com aaalba 2010

  • Young still strongly believes in the new ship, even as the Navy seeks to "truncate" the number it buys from seven ships to three and return to building Arleigh Burke DDG 51-class Aegis destroyers, which the Navy leadership claims are needed to combat new threats like ballistic missiles that the DDG 1000s weren't designed to defeat.

    News From DefenseNews.com 2009

  • Young still strongly believes in the new ship, even as the Navy seeks to "truncate" the number it buys from seven ships to three and return to building Arleigh Burke DDG 51-class Aegis destroyers, which the Navy leadership claims are needed to combat new threats like ballistic missiles that the DDG 1000s weren't designed to defeat.

    News From DefenseNews.com 2009

  • "We have a real problem if members of the General Assembly are going and trying to influence and truncate an ethics committee process so that they can get the intended result that they want and then use that for impeachment," he said.

    Defiant Sanford threatens legal fight against 'kangaroo court' 2009

  • "People like to truncate things in order to understand them but in reality there's no clear delineation."

    Roasted Kabocha Squash Kitty Greenwald 2011

  • It turns out that CAD software will calculate a convergance, but truncate the lines at the edge of the world as the software knows it.

    Why the Moon? Here's Why. - NASA Watch 2009

  • This breathtaking maneuver would provide Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, with the authority to truncate Berlin and stop the stampede of refugees.

    When Kennedy Blinked Charles McCarry 2011

Comments

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  • Cold truncating surgeon's blade

    razes what was St Tropezed.

    - Peter Reading, C, 1984

    August 2, 2008