Short

Since last week's words dealt with wordiness, let's look at some words which describe the opposite characteristic. We still have some other words for wordiness to discuss (G words, since Sunday was about P words). There seem to be more words for wordiness than for shortness of expression. Go figure.

While there are words relating to wordiness that can be used in a negative sense, none of today's words have much if any negativity to them. Apparently we aren't bothered too much by people using too few words. Perhaps Calvin Coolidge didn't have many detractors of his expressiveness. I remember a story about a dinner when the guest next to Calvin said to him "I have a bet with someone that I can get you to say more than two words." Calvin responded "You lose". Calvin was definitely laconic.

Laconic means brief in speech or expression, using few words. It is used to refer to speech more so than writing, and is derived from a Latin word describing someone from the Greek area of Laconia. Laconia is the area in southern Greece of which Sparta was the ancient capital. How it came to mean "of few words" is not as obvious. Certainly the Spartans were known for their disdain of anything but the bare necessities (hence its use as an adjective in English), but how did the area of Laconia become associated with the use of few words? The closest description I could come up with is reference in a 1998 article by Howard Bloom to Xenophon, who wrote "you would sooner hear a cry from a stone statue" than from a Spartan young person, and "even in the streets they...should proceed in silence." (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2495/1.html)

Sententious has a much different and only slightly less obscure derivation. While the word comes pretty directly from the Latin word sententiosis, which comes from the Latin word sententia, for sententia's definition we're directed to the word sentence. There we find that sententia means "way of thinking, opinion, sentiment." So how did it a way of thinking, opinion, sentiment come to mean expressing much in few words? One can only imagine that as certain individuals thought before they spoke (a less and less common attribute, it seems) there needed to be a word to describe the final pronouncements they would make. Often coming in only one sentence, these thoughtful statements came to be described as sententious. Etymology.com says that sententiosis doesn't mean "way of thinking" but "full of meaning, pithy". Not much more explanation there. Apparently etymology.com is being sententious.

Terse also comes from a Latin word, tersus, which means "wiped clean". It's easy to see how it can come to refer to a sentence or statement "wiped clean" of anything superfluous. While the dictionary suggests it also means "concise in a polished, smooth way" its use as that kind of compliment isn't something I've encountered very often.

Enough said.