Level B1 (Intermediate)
The French word of the day is bref, which means ‘in short’ and ‘anyway’ as an adverb and ‘brief/short’ as an adjective.
bref – IPA pronunciation /bʁɛf/
Word origin
The Modern French word bref comes from brevis in Latin, meaning ‘brief’ and ‘short’.
Example sentences
Le discours du professeur était très bref.
The professor’s speech was very short (brief).
For this first sentence, bref is being used as an adjective. The masculine and feminine forms of bref are ‘bref(s)’ and ‘brève(s)’. Note that bref can come before a noun: un bref discours (a short speech).
For these next two sentences, bref is a discourse marker meaning ‘anyway’, ‘in short’, ‘basically’ and ‘long story short’. It can be used change the subject or transition to another topic.
On a visité la Tour Eiffel, on est allé au café, on a marché sur les Champs-Elysées. Bref, on a adoré Paris!
We visited the Eiffel Tower, we went to a café, we walked on the Champs-Elysées. In short, we loved Paris!
Le cours était très long, le prof parlait de plein de choses sans intérêt. Bref, on n’a rien appris.
The class was very long and the teacher talked about lots of uninteresting things. Basically, we didn’t learn anything.
For this sentence, bref is a being used a filler work to mean ‘well’. This subject uses the subjunctive mood.
Bref, il va falloir que tu prennes une décision.
Well, you’re going to have to make a decision.
Continue learning French!
Now that you’ve mastered bref, check out our lesson covering alors (so), another useful word in speech!
