breve

American  

[breev, brev] / briv, brɛv /

noun

breves plural

1. Phonetics, Orthography. a diacritic (˘) over a vowel to show that it is short, or to indicate a specific pronunciation, as ŭ in (kŭt) cut.

2. Law.

   1. an initial writ.

   2. a writ, as one issued by a court of law.

3. Music.

   1. the longest modern note, equivalent to two semibreves or whole notes.

   2. Also brevis a note in medieval mensural notation equal to one-half or one-third of a longa.

4. Prosody. a mark ( ˘ ) over a syllable to show that it is not stressed.

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breve British  

/ briːv /

noun

1. an accent, (˘), placed over a vowel to indicate that it is of short duration or is pronounced in a specified way

2. music a note, now rarely used, equivalent in time value to two semibreves

3. RC Church a less common word for brief

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• breves
  plural

Etymology

Origin of breve

1250–1300; Middle English < Medieval Latin, Latin breve, neuter of brevis short; see brief

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

breve breves

B. breve and B. longum bacteria groups were thought to be beneficial.

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2024

His breve bid for the presidency will restore in the United States the ideals of Athenian democracy — or at least give us a good Greek yogurt parfait.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 30, 2019

There are instances of the letters i, u, and o with macrons and u with breve.

From Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See by Dearmer, Percy

These missae breves, or short Masses, as Protestant churches used them in Bach’s time, retained only the Kyrie and Gloria of the Roman Catholic Mass, stopping short of the Credo for obvious reasons.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2015

This e-text uses some special characters, including: letters with breves: ă, ĕ, ŭ If these do not display correctly, make sure that your browser's file encoding is set to UTF-8.

From The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles Vol. 2 by Gilfillan, George

Macrons, breves, umlauts etc have been removed from the body of the text since they were very obtrusive and made reading difficult.

From "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries by Caesar, Julius