Breve

1. n. The great ant thrush of Sumatra (Pitta gigas), which has a very short tail.
2. n. A note or character of time, equivalent to two semibreves or four minims. When dotted, it is equal to three semibreves. It was formerly of a square figure (as thus: / ), but is now made oval, with a line perpendicular to the staff on each of its sides; — formerly much used for choir service.
3. n. Any writ or precept under seal, issued out of any court.
4. n. A curved mark [/] used commonly to indicate the short quantity of a vowel.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.