brevity means the quality of being brief in duration. It carries an Arena rating of 1850, earned across 63 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, brevity ranks #35 of 17,113 for Most Elegant Words, #147 of 40,254 for Qualifying, #1,016 of 17,116 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,395 of 17,123 for Most Malleable Words.
brevity is pronounced /ˈbɹɛvɪti/.
Why “brevity” is a great word
The quality of expressing much in few words; concise and exact use of words. From Latin brevitās (“shortness”), from brevis (“short”), first attested in English c. 1500. Unlike “terseness,” which often implies a brusque or rude curtness, or “laconicism,” which denotes a pithy, often ironic sparseness, brevity is the neutral, cultivated art of compression. It is the clean incision of a scalpel, the pause that holds more than any paragraph, the single pebble that creates concentric ripples across a pond—a precision that speaks not from lack, but from fullness held in careful check.
Etymology
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”).
By surface analysis, brief + -ity.
noun
- The quality of being brief in duration.
- Succinctness; conciseness.e.g.“[B]revity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes[.]”
- A short piece of writing.
Words closest in meaning
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