A breve is a scansion mark used to show that a syllable is short, especially in classical or quantitative verse. It is the opposite of a macron, which marks a long syllable. In modern prosody, a breve may also be used more loosely to show that a syllable is unstressed or light.
Example
A scansion note might mark met as a breve in a line such as:
The metal gate swung shut at dusk
Related Definitions
[n] a diacritical mark (u-curved) placed over a vowel to indicate a short sound