brevity

First attested in English in 1509; either:

• Borrowed directly from Latin brevitās; or
• from Anglo-Norman brevité, from Old French brieveté, from Latin brevitātem, accusative of brevitās, from brevis (“short”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɛvəti/

• Audio (US)

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brevity (countable and uncountable, plural brevities)

1. (uncountable) The quality of being brief in duration.
   • 2005, Bill Bryson, A short history of nearly everything:

     Thanks to Global Positioning Systems we can see that Europe and North America are parting at about the speed a fingernail grows—roughly two yards in a human lifetime. If you were prepared to wait long enough, you could ride from Los Angeles all the way up to San Francisco. It is only the brevity of lifetimes that keeps us from appreciating the changes.

2. (uncountable) Succinctness; conciseness.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     [B]revity is the soul of wit,
     And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes[.]

   • 1856 June 14, “Head and Tail”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 2, number 33, London: John W. Parker and Son, page 142:

     Whenever a public question comes to such a crisis that the opportunities for individual intervention are reduced to the smallest possible compass, Mr. Roebuck is sure to step in with a formula, summing up the case with indignant brevity, censuring somebody, or panegyrizing somebody.

   • 1966, Jackson E. Morris, Principles of scientific and technical writing:

     A good technical writing style will now be defined as a style possessing clarity, brevity, and variety.

3. (rare, countable) A short piece of writing.

• (quality of being brief in duration): ephemerality, fleetingness, transiency; see also Thesaurus:transience
• (succinctness): concision, laconicism, terseness; see also Thesaurus:succinctness

• brevitic
• brevity is the soul of wit

• Appendix:Brief amounts of time