Bishop back, having embraced the brief time out? (8)
I believe the answer is:
breather
'time out?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'bishop back having embraced the' is the wordplay.
'bishop' becomes 'B' (chess abbreviation).
'back' becomes 'rear' (something's rear is its back).
'having embraced' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'rear' enclosing 'the' is 'reather'.
'b'+'reather'='BREATHER'
'brief' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for breather that I've seen before include "Short respite" , "Short rest between bouts of exercise" , "Informally a pause for rest - or to take in air" , "Recovery time" , "A rest from work - rather be thus" .)