From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishshort circuitˌshort ˈcircuit noun [countable] TEEa failure of an electrical system, caused by bad wires or a fault in a connection in the wires
Examples from the Corpus
short circuit• Capacitor C2 is included to reduce the gain at d.c. to unity whilst appearing as a short circuit to a.c. signals.• There was a short circuit Wednesday night on the side of the Cal State Northridge gym where the scoreboard is controlled.• And that's despite the fact they have attracted the best short circuit entry of the year.• An electrical short circuit started the fire, they think.• There is no shortcut to human fulfillment for men-just the short circuit of impotence.• Pedantry and intellectual theorising were not Basil's stock-in-trade; all such, he seemed to short circuit.• The fire was reported to have been caused by a wiring short circuit.short-circuitshort-ˈcircuit verb 1 [intransitive, transitive]TEE to have a short circuit or cause a short circuit in something2 [transitive]FAST/QUICK to get something done without going through the usual long methods SYN bypass I short-circuited the whole process by a simple telephone call.→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
short-circuit• You can short-circuit all the complicated messages by pressing 0. 