Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or state of being brief in duration.
  • noun Concise expression; terseness.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Shortness; especially, surprising or excessive curtailment of the thing spoken of: as, the brevity of human life. Specifically
  • noun Shortness in speech or writing; conciseness; condensation into few words.
  • noun Synonyms Compression, terseness, pithiness, succinctness, condensation, sententiousness, curtness.

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

  • noun Shortness of duration; briefness of time.
  • noun Contraction into few words; conciseness.

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

  • noun uncountable The quality of being brief in duration.
  • noun uncountable Succinctness; conciseness.
  • noun rare, countable A short piece of writing.

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

  • noun the use of brief expressions
  • noun the attribute of being brief or fleeting

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin brevitās, from brevis, short; see brief.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

First attested in English in 1509; either:

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word brevity.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • ... is the soul of wit.

    December 17, 2006

  • Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

    July 18, 2010