cut short

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cut short (third-person singular simple present cuts short, present participle cutting short, simple past and past participle cut short)

1. (transitive) To interrupt or curtail before the planned end time.

   The party was cut short because everything was getting broken.

   • 2012 August 21, Pilkington, Ed, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian‎:

     The Reggie Clemons case has been a cause of legal dispute for the past two decades. Prosecutors alleged that he and his co-defendants brutally cut short the lives of Julie and Robin Kerry, sisters who had just started college and had their whole adult lives ahead of them.

2. Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: see cut,‎ short.

• short cut, short-cut, shortcut