Terse Meaning and Usage

Terse:

concise; abrupt; succinct;
curt, brief, free of extra words.


Derivatives :

tersely – adverb
terseness - noun


Let’s look at some examples:

1. Her terse style of writing was widely praised for coming directly to the point.

2. The president gave a terse statement dismissing the charges of the opposing party.

3. “You have no idea,” he said in a terse, strained voice.

4. She was tremblingly delivering her message and answering the doctor’s terse, pertinent questions.

5. He gave a terse account of what had happened.

6. The editor, preferring a more terse writing style, cut 500 words from the 2,000-word article.

7. She believed in getting to the point, so she always gave terse answers.

8. The comments were rather terse; what I wanted to know was whether it worked well enough to even bother with.


Synonyms:
Attic, Ciceronian, Spartan, abbreviated, abridged, abrupt, aphoristic; aposiopestic, axiomatic, blunt, breviloquent, brief, brusque, chaste, classic, clear, clipped, close, closemouthed, compact, compendiary, compendious, compressed, concentrated, concise, condensed, contracted, crisp, cryptic, curt, cut, direct, distilled, docked, dumb, easy, elegant, elliptic, epigrammatic, exact, finished, formulaic, formulistic, gnomic, graceful, gracile, gruff, incisive, laconic, lean, limpid, lucid, monosyllabic, 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, shortened, silent, simple, snappy, snug, speechless, straightforward, succinct, summary, synopsized, taciturn, tart, tasteful, taut, tight, trenchant, trim, truncated, unaffected, ungracious, unlabored, unloquacious, untalkative, word-bound, wordless,



Antonym:
lengthy, long-winded, prolix, wordy


Some more examples:

1. By the time he came to write this account, he was crippled by arthritis, and his style had become necessarily terse.

2. Derek's terse reply ended the conversation.

3. The teacher's instructions were very terse after the class' disruptive behavior.

4. The waitress was very terse with the patrons after repeated requests for additional service.

5. His response as usual was terse, sounding rude and not even informative.