terse

• POS: Adjective

CIDE DICTIONARY

terse, a. [L. tersus, p. p. of tergere to rub or wipe off.].

•  Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth; polished.  [1913 Webster]

  "Many stones, . . . although terse and smooth, have not this power attractive."  [1913 Webster]
•  Refined; accomplished; -- said of persons.  Massinger.  [1913 Webster]
•  Elegantly concise; free of superfluous words; polished to smoothness; as, terse language; a terse style.  [1913 Webster]

  "Terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence."  [1913 Webster]

  "A poet, too, was there, whose verse
  Was tender, musical, and terse."  [1913 Webster]

  "“In eight terse lines has Phædrus told
  (So frugal were the bards of old)
  A tale of goats; and closed with grace,
  Plan, moral, all, in that short space.”"  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Neat; concise; compact.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

terse, adj. (terser, tersest)
1 (of language) brief, concise, to the point.
2 curt, abrupt.

Derivative

tersely adv. terseness n.

Etymology

L tersus past part. of tergere wipe, polish

THESAURUS

terse

Attic, Ciceronian, Spartan, abbreviated, abridged, abrupt, aphoristic, aposiopestic, axiomatic, bluff, blunt, brief, brusque, chaste, classic, clear, clear-cut, clipped, close, close-tongued, closemouthed, compact, compendious, compressed, concentrated, concise, condensed, contracted, crisp, curt, cut, direct, distilled, docked, dumb, easy, economical of words, elegant, elliptic, epigrammatic, finished, formulaic, formulistic, gnomic, graceful, gracile, gruff, incisive, indisposed to talk, laconic, lean, limpid, lucid, mum, mute, natural, neat, pellucid, perspicuous, petulant, pithy, plain, platitudinous, pointed, polished, precise, proverbial, pruned, pungent, pure, quiet, refined, reserved, restrained, round, rude, sententious, short, short and sweet, shortened, silent, simple, snug, sparing of words, speechless, straightforward, succinct, summary, synopsized, taciturn, tart, tasteful, taut, tight, tight-lipped, to the point, tongue-tied, trim, truncated, unaffected, ungracious, unlabored, unloquacious, untalkative, word-bound, wordless

ROGET THESAURUS

terse

Conciseness

N conciseness, brevity, the soul of wit, laconism, Tacitus, ellipsis, syncope, abridgment, compression, epitome, monostich, brunch word, portmanteau word, concise, brief, short, terse, close, to the point, exact, neat, compact, compressed, condensed, pointed, laconic, curt, pithy, trenchant, summary, pregnant, compendious, succinct, elliptical, epigrammatic, quaint, crisp, sententious, concisely, briefly, summarily, in brief, in short, in a word, in a few words, for shortness sake, to come to the point, to make a long story short, to cut the matter short, to be brief, it comes to this, the long and the short of it is, brevis esse laboro obscurus fio.