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brevity
in a sentence

show 85 more with this conextual meaning
  • I have condensed some of the action, for the sake of clarity, and eliminated some minor characters, for brevity;   (source)
    brevity = make it shorter
  • But when he was released he felt defrauded by the brevity of his captivity, and even in the days of his old age, when so many other wars were confused in his memory, he still thought he was the only man in the city, and perhaps the country, who had dragged fivepound leg irons for the sake of love.†   (source)
  • With the O.C. Bible, C.E.T. presented the Liturgical Manual and the Commentaries — in many respects a more remarkable work, not only because of its brevity (less than half the size of the O.C. Bible), but also because of its candor and blend of self-pity and self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • It came to him with just the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness and immediate certainty.†   (source)
  • He was preoccupied with the brevity of life.†   (source)
  • After Bailey learned definitely that I was his sister, he refused to call me Marguerite, but rather addressed me each time as "Mya Sister," and in later more articulate years, after the need for brevity had shortened the appellation to "My," it was elaborated into "Maya."†   (source)
  • In the pursuit of brevity, I shall assume that Saphira has already told you how your mother and I met, how Selena died, and how I came to be in Carvahall.†   (source)
  • The brevity was not due to discourtesy or coldness, simply to lack of habit.†   (source)
  • I had signs posted all over the palace and market place which said: Brevity Is the Soul of Wit.†   (source)
  • Paul, shirtless, stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his cutoffs, answering with awkward brevity the questions that came his way.†   (source)
  • It even captured the relationship's brevity.†   (source)
  • In the Army brevity was a virtue beyond all others.†   (source)
  • Despite the brevity, for Julie it was an almost analytical undertaking when their lips met.†   (source)
  • "They know," he replied with his usual brevity.†   (source)
  • Writing to a former law clerk, he declared himself innocent, saying he could never have achieved a style of such "strength and brevity."†   (source)
  • I realized Carlisle's memory of them, despite the brevity of their contact, would be perfectly clear.†   (source)
  • No. The sharp brevity of the sound seemed to expand it into an eloquent statement.†   (source)
  • All of us were holding on to Pig, protecting him; by touching Pig, we were touching each other, felt the connection of our time together, the depth and awful brevity of our common history, and the dazzling intensity of our friendship.†   (source)
  • The brevity of the nightgown gave Rafi a pleasant shock, but he couldn't take his eyes off her face.†   (source)
  • Since Catherine had instructed her not to use names or specifics on the phone, Marie had not questioned the brevity of the call.†   (source)
  • Her description of Nathan's furious eruption and the ensuing damage and debris was for me—in my frazzled state—agreeably laconic, but somehow more searing by its very brevity.†   (source)
  • I hope you noticed my brevity in introducing him.   (source)
    brevity = minimal use of words
  • Burnham could send telegrams, but they forced a cold and clumsy brevity and afforded little privacy.   (source)
    brevity = use of few words
  • She answered with equal indifference and brevity, and the others said no more.   (source)
  • In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits.†   (source)
  • Perhaps he wants to accentuate the comic or ironic incongruity between the brevity of the sexual act and its consequences.†   (source)
  • Lillian gave a brief little laugh, its forced brevity betraying that this was not quite the attitude she had expected.†   (source)
  • She brooded over the brevity of life.†   (source)
  • ON MONDAY, March 4, 1793, in an inaugural ceremony of record brevity, Adams looked on respectfully as Washington took the oath of office.†   (source)
  • He is not known to have ever expressed affection for her, and of her death he wrote all of one sentence, notable for its brevity and absence of the least sentiment.†   (source)
  • Since Oscar was not a proponent of brevity, he described in intricate detail how Moolak caught what seemed to be a few million salmon.†   (source)
  • The promptness and brevity of the reply called his bluff.†   (source)
  • Seven years a mendicant on foreign charity I lingered abroad : seven years is no brevity.†   (source)
  • And if I could not grasp the truth about W. (as for brevity's sake I had come to call her) in the past, why bother about W. in the future?†   (source)
  • Colonel Arbuthnot, uninterested in what a pack of foreigners called anything, replied with true British brevity, "Yes."†   (source)
  • "No," rejoined Naab, adding brevity to his coldness.†   (source)
  • Joe raised his head and with forceful brevity said, "Shadd."†   (source)
  • I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that struck me as ambiguous.†   (source)
  • The recollection of the brevity of life is a constant spur to him.†   (source)
  • "Yes, sir, that is so," says Mr. George with military brevity.†   (source)
  • She answered with equal indifference and brevity, and the others said no more.†   (source)
  • The brevity of Newman's judgments very often shocked and discomposed him.†   (source)
  • Ask him immediately!" said Mademoiselle Noemie, with soft brevity.†   (source)
  • His memory was good, and for so young a man he had read largely; the themes he preferred were the decay of Islam and the brevity of Love.†   (source)
  • After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight.†   (source)
  • Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity.†   (source)
  • The morning papers on Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles on the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and vaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity.†   (source)
  • And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself.†   (source)
  • He sat in the corner with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive brevity than before.†   (source)
  • During the forenoon, Tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his keepers, Hertford and St. John, with the Lady Elizabeth and the little Lady Jane Grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the end of the visit his 'elder sister'—afterwards the 'Bloody Mary' of history —chilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in his eyes, its brevity.†   (source)
  • He wondered if he would come to rest in that quiet nook, with its steady light, its simple dignity of bare plain graves fitting the brevity of life, the littleness of man.†   (source)
  • His poem was again about the decay of Islam and the brevity of love; as sad and sweet as he could contrive, but not nourished by personal experience, and of no interest to these excellent Hindus.†   (source)
  • It is my way — it always was my way, by instinct — ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.†   (source)
  • There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry, against which Mrs. Penniman felt bound to protest; the information with which she had undertaken to supply her niece was, after all, a favour.†   (source)
  • But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound it.†   (source)
  • All this had been confided to the Indian, who had acquitted himself of the trust with characteristic brevity.†   (source)
  • He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity.†   (source)
  • Familiar with the brevity and promptitude of the natives, he immediately communicated the result to his companions.†   (source)
  • I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience.†   (source)
  • But their very brevity and their obscurity reveal the intensity of the excitement which dominated me, and describe the actual position even better than my memory could do.†   (source)
  • "I am going to accept the situation, Judge Henderson," answered John, with a brevity that did not escape the keen old man.†   (source)
  • 'From Mr Ralph Nickleby,' said Newman, announcing his errand, when he got upstairs, with all possible brevity.†   (source)
  • I can scarcely hope to escape these various evils; for if I appear too lengthy to a man of the world, a lawyer may on the other hand complain of my brevity.†   (source)
  • As for the tribe itself, it had been content to announce to Montcalm, through his emissaries, with Indian brevity, that their hatchets were dull, and time was necessary to sharpen them.†   (source)
  • "My faith, my dear Aramis," said d'Artagnan, who detested verses almost as much as he did Latin, "add to the merit of the difficulty that of the brevity, and you are sure that your poem will at least have two merits."†   (source)
  • He answered, as it were, reluctantly, with extreme brevity, with a sort of disgust which grew more and more marked, though he answered rationally.†   (source)
  • Determined that there should be nothing in his conduct towards his mother resembling sullenness, he had occasionally spoken to her on passing matters, and would take no notice of the brevity of her replies.†   (source)
  • He felt, when he parted from her, that the brief words by which he had tried to convey to her his feeling about herself and the division which her fortune made between them, would only profit by their brevity when Dorothea had to interpret them: he felt that in her mind he had found his highest estimate.†   (source)
  • Her father's displeasure had cost the girl, as we know, a great deal of deep-welling sorrow—sorrow of the purest and most generous kind, without a touch of resentment or rancour; but for the first time, after he had dismissed with such contemptuous brevity her apology for being a charge upon him, there was a spark of anger in her grief.†   (source)
  • The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity.†   (source)
  • Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noemie quite in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise.†   (source)
  • Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued from Newman's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered.†   (source)
  • …and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.†   (source)
  • The brevity of life hath likewise given occasion to this comparison.†   (source)
  • But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.†   (source)
  • ] "I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity:" he sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.†   (source)
  • I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader with all the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity.†   (source)
  • These shall now be discussed; but as the subject has been drawn into great length, I shall so far consult brevity as to comprise all my observations on these miscellaneous points in a single paper.†   (source)
  • Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief:—your noble son is mad: Mad call I it; for to define true madness, What is't but to be nothing else but mad?†   (source)
  • But, considering his own defaults and demerits, — remembering the patience of Christ and the undeserved tribulations of the saints, the brevity of this life with all its trouble and sorrow, the discredit thrown on the wisdom and training of a man who cannot bear wrong with patience — he should refrain wholly from taking vengeance.†   (source)
  • I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table; and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions I asked her.†   (source)
  • I the rather consult brevity in discussing the probability of a preference founded upon a discrimination between the different kinds of industry and property, because, as far as I understand the meaning of the objectors, they contemplate a discrimination of another kind.†   (source)
  • The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity.†   (source)
  • I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in his service; but have, indeed, for brevity sake, omitted much more than is here set down.†   (source)
  • Again: because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed, "that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent…†   (source)
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