The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SHORT
Definition of SHORT
adjective
Having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English schort, short, from Old English sċeort, sċort (“short”), from Proto-West Germanic *skurt, from Proto-Germanic *skurtaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-. Doublet of shirt, skirt, and curt. Cognate with Scots short, schort (“short”), French court, Dutch kort, German kurz, Old High German scurz (“short”) (whence Middle High German schurz), Old Norse skorta (“to lack”) (whence Danish skorte), Albanian shkurt (“short, brief”), Latin curtus (“shortened, incomplete”) and Proto-Slavic *kortъkъ. See more at shirt.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
3rd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
8.9%
of traced words share this origin (2,636)
How it is built
Same root, SHORT · 3 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Danish, Dutch, French, Latin, Old Norse, Proto-Slavic, Scots.
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
SHORT in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 10 boards so far. 10 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 24, 13 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 149, 16 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 24, 13 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
SHORT starts with S and ends with T. Sorted, its letters read HORST - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
2 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start SHORT
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 24
Could you have found SHORT?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 24 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER