brief case

See also: briefcase

English

Noun

brief case (plural brief cases)

1. Dated form of briefcase.
   • 1933 November 29, “The Language Is Elegant But It’s “Scandal” Anyway”, in The Northerner, volume VII, number 14, Fort Wayne, Ind.: North Side High School, page three, column 2:

     That master expounder of eloqution, the Earl of Fuzzilania la Stoner, ambled into a certain room on the lower corridor (number not mentioned) and asked ye scribes and scribesses if the satchel, which he insinuates is a brief case, had been turned in and if so, where.

   • 1943, Emile C. Tepperman, Calling Justice, Inc.!:

     She was intensely eager to delve into the mystery of Mr. Joplin and his brief case.

   • 1960 April, “Restaurant cars and multiple-units”, in Trains Illustrated, page 222:

     There are no bodyside parcels racks, but a slatted shelf is provided at the base of each chair, under the seat, for light articles such as brief cases or handbags.

   • 1961, Stewart Sterling [pseudonym; Prentice Winchell], chapter 12, in Too Hot to Handle: A Marshal Pedley Novel, New York, N.Y.: Random House, page 77:

     He was at a banquette in the Stag Bar, with a café royale and sixteen registration cards, when a man who looked like a shy Milquetoast, a bookkeeper with an inferiority complex, deposited his brief case on the leather cushion beside the Marshal.

   • 2003, Kiran Bedi, What Went Wrong? …and Continues, 2nd edition, New Delhi: UBSPD, →ISBN, page 277:

     The local police once caught me and accused me of stealing a brief case of a bus passenger.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see brief,‎ case.
   • 2007, James A. Cocores, Louis B. Schlesinger, V. Blair Mesa, “Ganser’s Syndrome, Prison Psychosis, and Rare Dissociative States”, in Louis B. Schlesinger, editor, Explorations in Criminal Psychopathology: Clinical Syndromes with Forensic Implications, 2nd edition, Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, →ISBN, section III (Borderline and Psychotic Disorders), page 246:

     Dwyer and Reid (2004) presented a brief case of a 45-year-old South African man admitted to a neurology unit with a left hemiparesis and Ganser’s syndrome.