truncates

Truncates is the third-person singular present tense of truncate, a verb meaning to shorten something by cutting off part of its end. In general usage, truncation refers to the act or result of reducing length, content, or extent by removing a portion.

In geometry and related fields, truncation describes a specific transformation of shapes, most notably polyhedra. A truncated polyhedron is formed by cutting off its vertices, replacing corners with new faces and producing a figure with more faces and typically smaller edge lengths. Famous examples include the truncated tetrahedron and the truncated icosahedron, whose study intersects with chemistry, crystallography, and art.

In computing and data processing, truncation often means removing digits or characters beyond a certain point. Numeric truncation discards fractional parts of numbers, effectively rounding toward zero for many programming languages. String truncation limits the length of text by cutting off characters past a maximum width, which can affect encoding and data integrity. Date or time truncation rounds or cuts units to coarser granularity, such as truncating timestamps to the nearest day.

SQL and database contexts distinguish truncation from deletion. The TRUNCATE TABLE command removes all rows quickly and resets certain automatic counters, but unlike DELETE it typically cannot be rolled back in some systems and does not log individual row deletions. Truncation in statistics and probability refers to restricting a distribution to a subset of outcomes, while truncating data can bias analyses if not properly accounted for.

In linguistics and information processing, truncation or clipping refers to shortening a word or phrase for brevity, often preserving essential meaning. Truncates, as a verb form, is frequently encountered in technical documentation and software interfaces.