BREAL, MICHEL JULES ALFRED French philologist, was born on March 26 1832, at Landau in Rhenish Bavaria, of French parents, and died in Paris on Nov. 25 1915. Af ter studying at Weissenburg, Metz and Paris, he entered the Ecole Normale in 1852. In 1857 he went to Berlin, where he studied Sanskrit under Bopp and Weber. On his return to France Breal entered the department of oriental mss. at the Bibliotheque Imperiale. In 1864 he became professor of comparative grammar at the College de France.
His principal works are L'Etude des origines de la religion Zoroas trienne (1862) ; Hercule et Cacus (1863) , in which he disputes the principles of the symbolic school in the interpretation of myths; Le Mythe d'Oedipe (1864) ; Les Tables Eugubines (1875) ; Melanges de mythologie et de linguistique (2nd ed., 5882) ; Dictionnaire etymo logique latin (1885) ; Essai de Semantique (1897) , on the significa tion of words, translated into English by Mrs. H. Cust, with preface by J. P. Postgate.