abort
v.to stop a process or plan before it is finished, usually because something has gone wrong. You use this when you need to cancel an action immediately.
v.to terminate a procedure, mission, or process prematurely, typically due to a fault or safety concern. Often used in technical, military, or computing contexts.
“The pilot had to abort the takeoff due to a warning light.”
“The software will abort the installation if it detects that there is not enough disk space available.”
“Ground control made the difficult decision to abort the mission after a critical failure in the secondary cooling system was identified during the final countdown.”
The verb is transitive when referring to a specific plan or process, but can be used intransitively in emergency commands.
In computing, 'abort' is often used intransitively to describe a program stopping itself, rather than being the object of the action.
From Middle English, from Latin abortus, perfect active participle of aborior (“miscarry”), formed from ab + orior (“to come into being”). Doublet of abortus.
From Latin abortare, from abortus, from aboriri (“miscarry”), from ab- (“not”) + oriri (“come into being, arise, appear”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.