Brevis

#etymology Published: 2021-12-27

As you probably know, the part -brev- or -bri- sometimes appears in English words (e.g., abbreviate, brevity, brief). They come from the Latin brevis, meaning “short”. In this post, let’s see some more (not really common) English words of this origin.

abridge

This word is the doublet of abbreviate, and means “to shorten (a text, speech, etc.) whilst retaining the sense”. At first, I thought this word must be related to bridge, but it isn’t.

breviloquent

This word is the combination of brevis and loquor (I speak)¹. Thus, it means “using very few words” or “concise”.

breve

In linguistics, breve refers to the symbol “˘”. In Latin and Ancient Greek, this sign indicates a short vowel (cf. macron “¯” for a long vowel).

debrief

This word means “to obtain information from a person on the completion of a mission or after a journey”. The prefix de- here means “completely”, so I think it can be considered as “to obtian brief but enough information to complete a mission”.

merry

The Latin brevis ultimately comes from the PIE *mréǵʰus, meaning “short”. This origin is not really similar to brevis in form, but the sounds br and mr are probably similar. The word merry (meaning “happy”) comes from the same origin, probably because a happy time flies by pretty quickly.

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