Short Date Forward

You're seven-foot-three and meet someone on Tower Dating, a dating sight for tall people. It turns out that your date was exaggerating about her height. She's actually four-foot-eleven. You see her enter the bar where you're supposed to meet, and quickly pay the person sitting next to you to pretend to be her date.

One kind of short date forward.

Another kind has to do with financial markets. Here, a short date forward represents a forward contract to buy or sell a certain asset at a fixed point at a pre-arranged point in the future. The "short" part comes in because this particular version has a very near-term expiration date.

It's a short-term contract...as opposed to a long date forward, which has an expiration date further in the future.