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terse

UK/tɜːs/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,369 of 15,258leans written

Terse means short and abrupt in what is said. Fewer words than politeness would use.

It describes replies, statements and notes, and a terse reply is one that closes a conversation. There is a genuine ambiguity in it, since terse can be praise for economical writing and criticism for a rude answer, and only the context decides. It sits close to curt, which is always rude, and succinct, which is always a compliment. The adverb tersely usually appears in dialogue tags.

Definitions of terse

  1. 1adjectiveterseUsing very few words, in a way that seems abrupt.C1

    “The statement was terse and gave no reasons.”

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *terh₁-

  2. Latin

    tersus — clean, cleansed, rubbed or wiped off; neat, spruce; terse

  3. English, today

    terse

From Latin tersus (“clean, cleansed, rubbed or wiped off; neat, spruce; terse”), perfect passive participle of Latin tergō (“to clean, cleanse, rub, wipe, wipe off”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

terse in the wild

  • Marius Aventicensis or, popularly, Marius of Avenches was the Bishop of Aventicum (modern Avenches) from 574, remembered for his terse chronicle.

    Marius Aventicensis

  • Context-sensitive help can be implemented using tooltips, which either provide a terse description of a GUI widget or display a complete topic from the help file.

    Context-sensitive help

  • The book consists of 30 chapters treating Roman events in a terse overview, mainly focused on military and political conflicts.

    Festus (historian)

  • The information and style in the recipes is very terse.

    Mappae clavicula

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.