terse

[Terse]

Terse means brief, or using very few words. If your teacher tells you to make your writing in your essay style terse and to the point, he's saying use as few words as you can and be simple and clear.

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Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth; polished.

Adjective S.
brief and to the point; effectively cut short; "a crisp retort"; "a response so curt as to be almost rude"; "the laconic reply; `yes''"; "short and terse and easy to understand"

superl.
Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth; polished.

superl.
Refined; accomplished; -- said of persons.

superl.
Elegantly concise; free of superfluous words; polished to smoothness; as, terse language; a terse style.

Terse

Terse , a. [Compar. Terser ; superl. Tersest.] [L. tersus, p.p. of tergere to rub or wipe off.] 1. Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth; polished. [Obs.]

Many stones, . . . although terse and smooth, have not this power attractive.

2. Refined; accomplished; -- said of persons. [R. & Obs.] "Your polite and terse gallants." Massinger. 3. Elegantly concise; free of superfluous words; polished to smoothness; as, terse language; a terse style.

Terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence.

A poet, too, was there, whose verse Was tender, musical, and terse.

Syn. -- Neat; concise; compact. Terse, Concise. Terse was defined by Johnson "cleanly written", i. e., free from blemishes, neat or smooth. Its present sense is "free from excrescences," and hence, compact, with smoothness, grace, or elegance, as in the following lones of Whitehead: -

"In eight terse lines has Ph'91drus told (So frugal were the bards of old) A tale of goats; and closed with grace, Plan, moral, all, in that short space." It differs from concise in not implying, perhaps, quite as much condensation, but chiefly in the additional idea of "grace or elegance." -- Terse"ly, adv. -- Terse"ness, n.
Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth; polished.

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Usage Examples

As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects - digitize and dematerialize - we approach a 'Star Trek' future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles.

Misspelled Form

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