In this paper, a novel frequency pattern and competent criterion are introduced for short-circuit-fault recognition in permanent-magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs). The frequency pattern is extracted from the monitored stator current analytically and the amplitude of sideband components at these frequencies is introduced as a proper criterion to determine the number of short-circuited turns. Impacts of the load variation on the proposed criterion are investigated in the faulty PMSM. In order to demonstrate the aptitude of the proposed criterion for precise short-circuit fault detection, the relation between the nominated criterion and the number of short-circuited turns is specified by the mutual information index. Therefore, a white Gaussian noise is added to the simulated stator current and robustness of the criterion is analyzed with respect to the noise variance. The occurrence and the number of short-circuited turns are predicted using support-vector machine as a classifier. The classification results indicate that the introduced criterion can detect the short-circuit fault incisively. Simulation results are verified by the experimental results.