All 10 Uses of
brief
in
Moby Dick
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.†
Chpt 1-3 *
- A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah—'And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.'†
Chpt 7-9
- …remained unseen by me; though, indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea.†
Chpt 16-18
- But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded.†
Chpt 31-33
- His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries.†
Chpt 46-48
- The vast swells of the omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide…†
Chpt 46-48
- But the monster's run was a brief one.†
Chpt 79-81
- Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong.†
Chpt 94-96
- My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass.†
Chpt 94-96
- But the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude.†
Chpt 133-135
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).