terse

CEFRC1

/tɜːs/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
adjective
Using few words and often sounding unfriendly.
02
adjective
Extra detail
Burnished, polished; fine, smooth; neat, spruce.

Examples

He was always terse on the telephone.
Mary's email was very terse and it was clear that she was upset about something.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 4
Parts of speech: 1
Citations: 5
Synonyms: 5

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

Of manner or speech: abruptly or brusquely short; curt.
Of speech or style: brief, concise, to the point.

More examples

In context

Your last series contains some of the neatest, tersest, and most unpretendingly original criticism, I have lately met with.
In eight terse lines has Phædrus told / (So frugal were the Bards of old) / A Tale of Goats; and clos'd with grace / Plan, Moral, all, in that ſhort space.
My voice was terser than I intended, but what the hell. The night was turning out to be interesting in some ways and extremely frustrating in others.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The manager gave a blank reply when asked about the layoffs.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

In eight terse lines has Phædrus told / (So frugal were the Bards of old) / A Tale of Goats; and clos'd with grace / Plan, Moral, all, in that ſhort space.
1777, [George Riley], The Asses Ears, a Fable. Addressed to the Author of The Goat's Beard [William Whitehead], London: Printed for G. Riley, […], →OCLC; quoted in “Art. VIII. Ass...
Your last series contains some of the neatest, tersest, and most unpretendingly original criticism, I have lately met with.
1832 September, [John Wilson], “Noctes Ambrosianae. No. LXII.”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXXII, number CXCVIII, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: T[homas] Cad...
The book contains some happily done portrait touches of Napoleon, [...] and this and other aphoristical sentences scattered throughout this volume, [...] form as terse and trenchant a character-sketch of the Emperor as may be found almost anywhere.
1902, G. W. Parker, “Things and Other Things: Letters to Living Authors—IX. Sir [Arthur] Conan Doyle”, in Donald Macleod, editor, Good Words, London: Isbister and Company Limited […], →OCLC, page 817, column 1
Many protested that they had nothing to do with the fighting. At a word from the General the soldiers ripped off the men's shirts and examined the front of their shoulders. If they found bruises that might have been made from the butt of a gun when it had been fired—the terse order was, "Shoot him!" And many of the young men of Trujillo had disappeared.
1946, Clayton Knight, The Quest of the Golden Condor, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →OCLC, page 94
[...] [Samuel] Beckett has become virtually mute, musewise, having progressed from marvellously constructed English sentences through terser and terser French ones to the unsyntactical, unpunctuated prose of Comment C'est and 'ultimately' to wordless mimes.
1977, John Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion”, in Malcolm Bradbury, editor, The Novel Today: Contemporary Writers on Modern Fiction, Manchester: Manchester University Press by arrangement with Fontana Books; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, →ISBN, page 73

Keep terse

Looking a word up is the easy part. LexUp remembers which words you have met and brings them back at the point you were about to forget them.

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

Origin

adjective

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

Deep Dive

adjective

More examples

Related

Quick test

The manager gave a blank— reply when asked about the layoffs.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

The manager gave a blank reply when asked about the layoffs.