Record hard precious stone cut, in brief (9)
I believe the answer is:
ephemeral
'brief' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'record hard precious stone cut' is the wordplay.
'record hard' becomes 'eph' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'precious stone' becomes 'emerald' (emerald is a kind of precious stone).
'cut' means to remove the last letter.
'emerald' with its last letter removed is 'emeral'.
'eph'+'emeral'='EPHEMERAL'
'in' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ephemeral that I've seen before include "not going to last long" , "A mere help (anag) - short-lived" , "Transient, fleeting" , "Short-lived, passing quickly" , "short term gain" .)