- concise
- concise, terse, succinct, laconic, summary, pithy, compendious are comparable when meaning briefly stated or presented or given to or manifesting brevity in statement or expression.A person is concise who speaks or writes briefly ; a thing is concise that is brief because all superfluities have been removed and all elaboration avoided{
a concise report
}{I hadn't known Jane spoke so well. She has a clever, coherent way of making her points, and is concise in reply if questioned— Rose Macaulay
}A thing is terse that is both concise and finished; the word often implies both pointedness and elegance{pure, terse, elegant Latin— Edwards
}{terse headlines are another part of the Tribune's campaign to save newsprint— New Yorker
}A person or thing is succinct that compresses or is marked by compression into the smallest possible space; the term suggests great compactness and the use of no more words than are necessary{succinct directions
}{a strict and succinct style is that where you can take away nothing without loss, and that loss to be manifest— Ben Jonson
}{a book must have a title, and today it must have a succinct title; therefore this book appears as Richelieu— Belloc
}A person or thing is laconic that is characterized by such succinctness as to seem curt, brusque, unperturbed, or mystifying{this laconic fool makes brevity ridiculous— Davenant
}{I cannot exactly say with Caesar, "Veni, vidi, vici": however, the most important part of his laconic account of success applies to my present situation— Byron
}{laconic, these Indians— La Barre
}A thing is summary that presents only the bare outlines or the main points without details{a summary account of the year's events under a few main headings
}The term often suggests almost rude curtness or extreme generality{the terms I use here are exceedingly summary. You may interpret the word salvation in any way you like— James
}{her diary and her letters continued to be mainly the swift and summary record of crowded and delightful days— Ellis
}A thing is pithy that is not only terse or succinct but full of substance and meaning and therefore especially forcible or telling{pithy epigrams
}{a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul— Hawthorne
}{his speech was blacksmith-sparked and pithy— Masefield
}Something is compendious which is concise, summary, and weighted with matter; the word suggests the type of treatment that distinguishes the typical compendium{a compendious account of the Reformation
}{a compendious style
}{the compendious scholarly words which save so much trouble— T. E. Brown
}Analogous words: condensed, compressed (see CONTRACT vb): compacted, concentrated (see COMPACT vb): abridged, abbreviated, shortened (see SHORTEN): *brief, shortAntonyms: redundantContrasted words: prolix, diffuse, verbose, *wordy
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
