All 19 Uses of
brief
in
Ulysses by James Joyce
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.†
Chpt 1
- Brief exposure.†
Chpt 1 *
- Stephen sketched a brief gesture.†
Chpt 2
- I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you.†
Chpt 7
- —Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.†
Chpt 12
- A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn immeasurable.†
Chpt 13
- For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief.†
Chpt 14
- A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock.†
Chpt 14
- Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber.†
Chpt 15
- VIRAG: (Prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region.†
Chpt 15
- —Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the direction of the questioner about the number.†
Chpt 16
- In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn't straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as gods.†
Chpt 16
- Some person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank.†
Chpt 16
- The deceased gentleman was a most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply regretted.†
Chpt 16
- On the vigil of the 15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty and year not stated).†
Chpt 17
- With brief suspiration he reassumed the candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room, hallfloor, and reentered.†
Chpt 17
- Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs Ellis's juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.†
Chpt 17
- …and after 2 months' consecutive use of Sandow-Whiteley's pulley exerciser (men's 15/-, athlete's 20/-) viz. chest 28 in and 29 1/2 in, biceps 9 in and 10 in, forearm 8 1/2 in and 9 in, thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf 11 in and 12 in: 1 prospectus of The Wonderworker, the world's greatest remedy for rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker, Coventry House, South Place, London E C, addressed (erroneously) to Mrs L. Bloom with brief accompanying note commencing (erroneously): Dear Madam.†
Chpt 17
- The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by the insentient material of a strainveined timber table.†
Chpt 17
Definition:
-
(meaning too common or rare to warrant focus) Brief is most commonly encountered as an adjective meaning "of short duration." Other meanings derive from the idea of short--as when making a long story short by summarizing it, or when wearing briefs (underwear).