Other forms: short shrifts
When you're treated rudely or curtly by someone, like a doctor who sends you away without listening to your list of symptoms, you're given short shrift.
If you reject someone who wants to join your club without even reading his application, you give him short shrift, because you've turned him down without really giving him a chance. Shrift is an old fashioned word for a confession to a priest, and in the 1500s short shrift meant the brief chance a condemned prisoner had to confess before being put to death. It wasn't until the early 1800s when it began to refer to a hasty dismissal.