All 11 Uses of
brief
in
The House of Mirth
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- She returned wearily to the thought of Percy Gryce, as a wayfarer picks up a heavy load and toils on after a brief rest.†
Chpt 1.3 *
- She had died during one of their brief visits to New York, and there Lily at once became the centre of a family council composed of the wealthy relatives whom she had been taught to despise for living like pigs.†
Chpt 1.3
- If Lily recalled this early emotion it was not to compare it with that which now possessed her; the only point of comparison was the sense of lightness, of emancipation, which she remembered feeling, in the whirl of a waltz or the seclusion of a conservatory, during the brief course of her youthful romance.†
Chpt 1.6
- The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.†
Chpt 1.9
- She was still languid from her brief sleep and the exhilaration of the evening, and the sight of Selden's writing brought back the culminating moment of her triumph: the moment when she had read in his eyes that no philosophy was proof against her power.†
Chpt 1.13
- It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Nice; and not till he was installed in the corner of an empty carriage, did he exclaim to himself, with a reaction of self-contempt: "What the deuce am I running away from?"†
Chpt 2.1
- It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station when Miss Bart crossed his path; but though, after his brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual change in his purpose.†
Chpt 2.3
- Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her.†
Chpt 2.3
- In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys' hotel.†
Chpt 2.3
- But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions from the long disgust of her days.†
Chpt 2.9
- She must shut them out for a few hours; she must take a brief bath of oblivion.†
Chpt 2.13
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).