Terse

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Terse \Terse\, a. [Compar. {Terser}; superl. {Tersest}.] [L.
     tersus, p. p. of tergere to rub or wipe off.]
     1. Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth;
        polished. [Obs.]
        [1913 Webster]
  


              Many stones, . . . although terse and smooth, have
              not this power attractive.            --Sir T.
                                                    Browne.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Refined; accomplished; -- said of persons. [R. & Obs.]
        "Your polite and terse gallants." --Massinger.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Elegantly concise; free of superfluous words; polished to
        smoothness; as, terse language; a terse style.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence.
                                                    --Macaulay.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              A poet, too, was there, whose verse
              Was tender, musical, and terse.       --Longfellow.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Syn: Neat; concise; compact.
  
     Usage: {Terse}, {Concise}. Terse was defined by Johnson
            "cleanly written", i. e., free from blemishes, neat or
            smooth. Its present sense is "free from excrescences,"
            and hence, compact, with smoothness, grace, or
            elegance, as in the following lones of Whitehead: 
            [1913 Webster]
  
                  "In eight terse lines has Phaedrus told
                  (So frugal were the bards of old)
                  A tale of goats; and closed with grace,
                  Plan, moral, all, in that short space."
            [1913 Webster] It differs from concise in not
            implying, perhaps, quite as much condensation, but
            chiefly in the additional idea of "grace or elegance."
            [1913 Webster] -- {Terse"ly}, adv. -- {Terse"ness}, n.
            [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  terse
       adj : brief and to the point; effectively cut short; "a crisp
             retort"; "a response so curt as to be almost rude";
             "the laconic reply; `yes'"; "short and terse and easy
             to understand" [syn: {crisp}, {curt}, {laconic}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  106 Moby Thesaurus words for "terse":
     Attic, Ciceronian, Spartan, abbreviated, abridged, abrupt,
     aphoristic, aposiopestic, axiomatic, bluff, blunt, brief, brusque,
     chaste, classic, clear, clear-cut, clipped, close, close-tongued,
     closemouthed, compact, compendious, compressed, concentrated,
     concise, condensed, contracted, crisp, curt, cut, direct,
     distilled, docked, dumb, easy, economical of words, elegant,
     elliptic, epigrammatic, finished, formulaic, formulistic, gnomic,
     graceful, gracile, gruff, incisive, indisposed to talk, laconic,
     lean, limpid, lucid, 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,
     short and sweet, shortened, silent, simple, snug, sparing of words,
     speechless, straightforward, succinct, summary, synopsized,
     taciturn, tart, tasteful, taut, tight, tight-lipped, to the point,
     tongue-tied, trim, truncated, unaffected, ungracious, unlabored,
     unloquacious, untalkative, word-bound, wordless
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  Terse
       
          Language for decryption of hardware logic.
       
          ["Hardware Logic Simulation by Compilation", C. Hansen, 25th
          ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf, 1988].