short order
5
3.4
- noun
- /ʃɔrt ˈɔrdər/
- US
:
pedido rápido
- When the crowd came in at lunchtime, the staff worked tirelessly to fill all short orders quickly.
- short-order cook
Examples
-
In short order, Job loses his house, his land, his flocks, his family, and his health.
Blog text (15) -
In short order, Jackov's Joint became the grail of cutting-edge poseurs.
Fiction book (1995) -
Sometimes they positively go through the floor in short order, too.
Blog text (32) -
I saw a short-order cook.
-
In short order, she recounted the last fifteen minutes of her date with Carlton.
Fiction book (2001) -
In the busy diner, the chef expertly prepared burgers and fries in short order.
-
The restaurant was famous for serving breakfast items in short order on weekdays.
Synonyms
810
1.0
A request for goods or services to be delivered
111
1.0
Cheap food that is already cooked and sold to eat quickly, like hamburgers or fried chicken
A quick, simple meal you make and eat when short on time
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally built from 'short' (of brief duration) + 'order' (a customer's request for food). A learner who knows both words can infer that it refers to an order that can be prepared and served quickly; this adjective+noun composition is a common, cross-linguistically transparent pattern.
Etymology
The phrase short order comes from busy diner kitchens where cooks made simple dishes very quickly. A cook who handled short orders of eggs or toast did them very fast, so short order now means 'an order for food that can be prepared and served very quickly'.