Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being brief; shortness; brevity; conciseness in discourse or writing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality of being brief; brevity; conciseness in discourse or writing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The characteristic of being brief.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the attribute of being brief or fleeting
  • noun the temporal property of being very short

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • Here is a summary of the Sunday Round 17 games, please excuse the "briefness" of the resumes as I have just got in.

    Soccer Blogs - latest posts 2010

  • Lightly indeed his flesh sat upon his soul, and his soul, in its briefness of clarity, knew by its very clarity that the black of cessation was near.

    THE RED ONE 2010

  • And might well have drowned in this drink of men -- I who had never known a mother's breast in the briefness of time I had lived -- had it not been for Lingaard.

    Chapter 17 2010

  • The men holding the hatch-cover seemed perplexed, puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony.

    Chapter 3 2010

  • It was nervous, tingling work, for as surely as I sensed his intention of briefness, just as surely had he sensed mine.

    Chapter 11 2010

  • But the briefness of that window is the primary reason they were doomed.

    Matthew Yglesias » The Fall of Poland 2010

  • The problem with my post's briefness on that is that I really did not go into the semantics of the issue - you cover a lot of it, but perhaps due to the brevity of my post, some things were not communicated clearly (or at all).

    On Profanity: 4 Hal Duncan 2009

  • At a time like this, we all are reminded of the briefness of life and the importance of being ready for our eternal destination.

    Growing Pains Actor Found Dead | CurveHouse.com 2010

  • Currently most large internet systems are written in Java, which is not exactly famous for its briefness.

    Archive 2008-01-01 2008

  • Currently most large internet systems are written in Java, which is not exactly famous for its briefness.

    European Common Lisp Meeting 2008, April 20, Amsterdam 2008

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