1. a musical note equal to two whole notes
Usage: music
2. a curved mark (˘) placed over a vowel to show it has a short sound
Usage: linguistics; phonetics

Examples

• The composer used a breve to indicate the longest note in the piece.
• In medieval music, the breve was considered a short note.
• The dictionary uses a breve to mark short vowel sounds.
• Students learned to recognize the breve symbol in their phonics lesson.
• The breve over the ‘a’ shows it should be pronounced as in ‘cat’.