How Abort Works

You may have heard in action movies, “Abort mission, abort mission!” The leader is instructing the team to stop the plan and return to base. Although the term is now more commonly associated with abortion, people use it to describe the end of something or the cancellation of plans midway, especially when it pertains to a mission or flight.

In biology, when you abort something, you can also stunt its growth. Something remains rudimentary and may even degenerate. Even outside of biology, this prevention of allowing something to grow beyond a basic level applies. This is the case when you terminate an agreement in process or abort a software upgrade. Relations between companies remain as they were, and a computer program will only become more outdated as time goes by.

Abort Example

A company has been working out upgrades to their online eCommerce platform that would significantly improve workflow and the customer experience. Everytime the software engineering department attempts to apply the changes, it crashes the system. IT system management decides to abort the upgrade until they can resolve the issue of crashing the system.

Significance of Abort

Being able to abort a process or end something before it even begins is just as important as being able to see something through. For a business to abort a merger, they could potentially avoid significant projected losses on their end. To abort an upgrade to a computer system, as seen in the example above, means that the system stays at a rudimentary or outdated level, but the company avoids a technological disaster.

Aborting something gives someone or a business entity more time to consider facts and get out of a harmful situation before they are too deep into it. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving up, but rather ceasing something for a cause. If a company or worker aborts a plan, it may also help them consider why something didn’t work out. Perhaps they need to implement a better management process, clean up a hard drive, or find a new project leader.

Abort vs. Abend

Both abort and abend mean the termination of something. However, abort may refer to a miscarriage, abortion, or untimely birth, whereas abend does not apply to these situations. Abend also is used in computing when referring to an unexpected or unusual end to a program. In other words, abend is more specific and correct to information technology or daily tasks. You can use abort as an umbrella term for ending something.

Abort vs. Abortion

Both abort and abortion can essentially mean the same exact thing. Abort can refer to the medical procedure (abortion), but abortion is more strongly associated with the medical procedure. Abortion also means something that is said that is entirely unsavory, inappropriate, or poorly carried out as to imply it was disastrous. For example, “That speech was an abortion. Absolutely awful!”