shorthand

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A system of rapid handwriting employing symbols to represent words, phrases, and letters.
2. n. A system, form, or instance of abbreviated or formulaic reference: "The classical error is to regard a scientific law as only a shorthand for its instances” ( Jacob Bronowski).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A system of writing briefer than that in general use (which is distinctively called longhand); a method of writing in which abbreviations or arbitrary simple characters or symbols are more or less systematically employed, in order to write words with greater rapidity than in the ordinary method of writing; brachygraphy; stenography; tachygraphy. The varieties of shorthand now in use are nearly all based on the phonetic principle. The system introduced by Isaac Pitman in 1837, and known as phonography (which see) from 1840, has, in its various modifications by its originator and others, a very wide currency wherever the English language is spoken. After the issue of the ninth edition of his work, in 1853, Pitman introduced extensive changes (especially in the vowel-system). The following is a comparative view of Pitman's later and earlier systems and that of a modification of them by J. E. Munson of New York (1886):
2. n. For further comparison, the sentence “my tongue is the pen of a ready writer,” as written in these three systems, is here given:
3. n. [The following passage is an early allusion to the use of the word in this sense:
4. Of writing, contracted; stenographic; written in shorthand: as, shorthand notes.
5. Of persons, using shorthand; stenographic.

Wiktionary

1. n. A compendious and rapid method of writing by substituting symbols, for letters, words, etc.; short writing; stenography; phonography
2. n. any brief or shortened way of saying or doing something

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A compendious and rapid method or writing by substituting characters, abbreviations, or symbols, for letters, words, etc.; short writing; stenography. See Illust. under phonography.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a method of writing rapidly
2. adj. written in abbreviated or symbolic form