Footnote 169: Abridged from Grace Abounding, Part 3; Works (ed. 1873), p. 71.

From the fourth to the seventh centuries, however, it was well known and highly valued by Hilary of Poitiers, St. Jerome, and Rufinus, and closely followed and abridged in their rhetorical works by Cassiodorus, Julius Victor, and Isidore of Seville.

Firstly they are strangers, and as such are not only ignorant of our laws, but entitled to our hospitality; next, they have been punished sufficiently for the original offence, by being abridged of the day's sports; and as to the crime committed against ourselves, in the person of our agents, it is freely forgiven, for forgiveness is a generous quality, and becomes a paternal form of rule.

The two terms overlap; but there is a fairly strong tendency to use shorten for reduction in length, and abridge for reduction in quantity or mass.

NM: publisher's statement, editing & abridging of original text.

The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of color; and any measure adopted by Congress should look to that end.

By Charles Dickens, abridged with introd. & notes by Blanche Jennings Thompson.

This he risked; the emergency had grown too desperate for more paltering; the lead had been abridged to thirty yards; in two minutes more it would be nothing.

It is the whole man wrapt up into one desire; all the powers, vigor, and faculties of the soul abridged into one inclination.

E. [10] There is a good deal more in the original, totally uninteresting to the reader, in the same querulous strain of invective against Oviedo, but which is here abridged as conveying no information.