What does "short read" mean in the output of fsck on RHEL?

Issue

When performing a filesystem check on an ext2/3/4 filesystem, the fsck program returned several errors regarding "short reads" as in the following:

e2fsck -f /dev/mapper/vg1-lv1
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Error reading block 262927 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 49158.  Ignore error? no

Error reading block 9667704 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 49158.  Ignore error? no

Error while iterating over blocks in inode 49158: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
e2fsck: aborted