Q.The ability of a muscle to shorten forcefully is known as

Of the four properties of skeletal muscle, contractility is specifically defined as the ability to forcefully shorten.

The chapter lists all four properties side by side: excitability (responding to a stimulus), contractility (forcefully shortening), extensibility (stretching/lengthening) and elasticity (recoiling back to original length after being stretched). Each property describes a different stage of how a muscle works — excitability is how it's told to act, contractility is the actual shortening action th …