the.com/shortcrust pastry

means A basic pastry made by rubbing fat into flour (with a little water to bind it) that bakes up crumbly and short rather than flaky or chewy, used for pie crusts, tarts, and quiches.

from "Shortcrust" leans on the old baking sense of "short" meaning crumbly or easily broken — a meaning that survives in "shortbread" and "shortening" too. That sense likely comes from the idea of short, fragile gluten strands: the fat coats the flour and physically blocks long gluten chains from forming, so the dough breaks cleanly instead of stretching. "Pastry" itself traces back through French "pâtisserie" to Latin "pasta," meaning dough or paste — the same root that gives us "paste" and "pasta."