From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Abbreviation \Ab*bre'vi*a"tion\, noun [LL. abbreviatio: cf. F. abbr['e]viation.]
1. The act of shortening, or reducing.
2. The result of abbreviating; an abridgment. --Tylor.
3. The form to which a word or phrase is reduced by contraction and omission; a letter or letters, standing for a word or phrase of which they are a part; as, Gen. for Genesis; U.S.A. for United States of America.
4. (Mus.) One dash, or more, through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, or demi-semiquavers. --Moore.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: a shortened form of a word or phrase
2: shortening something by omitting parts of it
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
95 Moby Thesaurus words for "abbreviation": abbreviature, abrege, abridgment, abstract, apocope, aposiopesis, astriction, astringency, blue-penciling, bottleneck, bowdlerization, brief, cancellation, capsule, censoring, censorship, cervix, circumscription, clipping, coarctation, compactedness, compaction, compend, compression, compressure, concentration, condensation, condensed version, consolidation, conspectus, constriction, constringency, contraction, contracture, crasis, curtailment, cutting, decrease, deletion, digest, diminuendo, draft, editing, elision, ellipsis, epitome, erasure, expurgation, foreshortening, head, hourglass, hourglass figure, isthmus, knitting, narrow place, narrowing, neck, omission, outline, overview, pandect, precis, pruning, puckering, pursing, recap, recapitulation, reduction, retrenchment, review, rubric, shortened version, shortening, skeleton, sketch, solidification, stranglement, strangulation, striction, stricture, striking, summary, summation, survey, syllabus, syncope, syneresis, synopsis, systole, telescoping, thumbnail sketch, topical outline, truncation, wasp waist, wrinkling
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