Curtailment
/kərˈteɪlmənt/noun
The act of reducing, limiting, or cutting short something.
Did you know?Curtailment comes from a verb formed in medieval French from a word for a short tail, so its history is basically “make the tail smaller” before it became a business and legal term.
Etymological Timeline
Late Middle English
English
curtailment
“the act of shortening or reducing”
Middle French
French
courtailler
“to cut short, dock, or shorten”
Old French
French
court
“short”
Latin
Latin
curtus
“short, truncated”
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*sker-
“to cut”