Brewer's: Cut Short

is to shorten. “Cut short all intermission” (Macbeth, iv. 3). To cut it short means to bring to an end what you are doing or saying.

His life was cut short.
He died prematurely. The allusion is to Atropos, one of the three Parcæ cutting the thread of life span by her sister Clotho.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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