macronspecialized
Those single acutes (like the breves) which function as length diacritics are clearly positioned above the vowel.
As early as 1821, at least one of the missionaries was using macrons and breves in making handwritten transcriptions of Hawaiian vowels.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Linguistics: phonology & phonetics
accommodation
alliterative
alveolar
apheresis
aphesis
assonance
diphthong
homonym
intrusive
labial
labialize
labiodental
lateral
postconsonantal
retroflex
retroflexion
rhotic
rhyme
unpronounceable
unrepeatable

Examples of breve

breve
This destroys an otherwise fascinating proportion in the motet in its ideal complete shape, with a length of 171 breves.
The only point at which this relatively quick motion slows is at the talea's midpoint, which is spanned by a breve-long ligature.
The initial consonance is developed, then 'saturated' by the figures chosen and sung to an unfolding pattern of longs and breves.
The motet has a length of 150 breves.
Its music begins with a rest of three breves as a very downto-earth illustration of the following je ne chant.
Therefore, a breve adjoined to a long does not automatically cause its imperfection.
The contrafact shows how close these little motets were to the secular repertoire (it is only twenty breves long).
If both voices are taken into account, the total is, again, 72 (this time, breves).
The breve following this long does not imperfect the long but is simply a guidepost between the two possible referents of the same figure.
The notation of this piece - like many others in this repertory - uses rhomboid breves.
The new music is twelve perfect longs in length, thirty-six breves.
Other contentious points depend on whether a rest between phrases should be a perfect long or a breve.
In diminution the perfect longs are replaced by perfect breves, preceded by a perfect semibreve.
The pairs of crossed breve rests (pausas transfixis) retain their normal value - thus each pair is equal, in modern transcription, to a dotted semibreve rest.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.