do they have some kind of freakish understanding on words?

[koreen]

i read in a book that a mealy pie dough is different from a flaky pie dough because the fat is blended into the flour more thoroughly, until the mixture look like coarse cornmeal... unlikte the flaky which stop when it's pea-sized. i understand what has been said here however, the statements afte that made me wonder. what the heck do they mean about short? is is literal short?

here's the paragraph:
To produce mealy doughs with even more resistance to soaking, the flour and fat can be blended together completely to make a smooth paste. Such a dough is very short when baked.

[shaneystar2]

Short crust pastry is a term used for pastry made using fat and flour .
The "shortening" is also a term for the fat used in the preparation..butter, lard, or other fat.
In these sense it means short or light and crumbly as opposed to other pastries which may be worked for longer thereby elongating the gluten which would make the pastry chewy.
Short pastry gets its name from the fact that by shortening the preparation time this limits the length of the gluten chains while at the same time keeping the pastry as light as possible.

[Pea Pod]

I think the term short in your question means it will produce a harder pastry thereby when a soggy filling is added the pastry will not leak. Another example of this would be hot water pastry which is traditionally used for pork pies etc.