Meaning
To deal with a person, request or idea with minimal, unsympathetic attention, dismissing it briskly rather than considering it properly; often used of officials, committees or editors rejecting approaches out of hand. Neutral to slightly formal register; it usually implies disapproval of the brusqueness, or relish in reporting it. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A shrift was the confession of sins to a priest together with the penance and absolution that followed; the word is Old English scrift, from scrifan, to impose penance, and it survives visibly in Shrove Tuesday, the day set aside for being shriven before Lent. The practice belongs to the pre-Reformation world of mandatory confession and priestly absolution. In an era when sentences were carried out at once, condemned prisoners were hurried to the scaffold and allowed only a brief last confession, and 'short shrift' named that cursory shrift; Etymonline dates the phrase to the 1590s in this literal sense. The most famous early account is Holinshed's Chronicles (1577), describing the execution of Lord Hastings in 1483 on Richard of Gloucester's orders: he 'made a short shrift, for a longer would not be suffered', a scene Shakespeare compressed in Richard III (performed by 1594) into 'Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head'. The figurative sense of scant, unsympathetic attention followed much later; Etymonline attests it by 1814, and The Phrase Finder's earliest American example is the Adams Sentinel of Gettysburg, August 1841.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- be given short shrift
- give someone short shrift
- give something short shrift
- make short shrift of
Usage Examples
- The planning committee gave short shrift to the proposal for a drive-through takeaway on the village green.
- Fans demanding a refund got short shrift from the box office, which pointed them to the small print on the ticket.
- Her opening chapter makes short shrift of the claim that the valley was empty before the railway arrived.