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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tersely

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.]

    Many stones, . . . although terse and smooth, have not this power attractive.
    --Sir T. Browne.

  2. Refined; accomplished; -- said of persons. [R. & Obs.] ``Your polite and terse gallants.''
    --Massinger.

  3. Elegantly concise; free of superfluous words; polished to smoothness; as, terse language; a terse style.

    Terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence.
    --Macaulay.

    A poet, too, was there, whose verse Was tender, musical, and terse.
    --Longfellow.

    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:

    ``In eight terse lines has Ph[ae]drus 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.

Wiktionary
tersely

adv. In a brief, concise, or to the point manner.

WordNet
tersely

adv. in a short and concise manner; "a particular bird, exactly and tersely described in the book of birds" [syn: telegraphically]

Usage examples of "tersely".

Azure said tersely, and went on to explain that the living switchboards enabled members of the Associative to stay in touch with each other over considerable distances.

Kahteney declared tersely, favoring the Naiche wakanisha with an irritated glance.

Brigid tersely told him that the surviving Mags had surrendered to the Tigers of Heaven.

At the very least, he told Tenet, tersely, someone should be sent to Riyadh to get the Saudis to rearrest the trio that had recently been released.

There was an occasional shout, a tersely barked order, the rattle of machinery as it approached the adit, but most of the sounds of activity in the mines was swallowed in the silverlined bowels of the mountain.

Nor could anyone say with any substantial probability where the damned machines had originated, though the captured records, sketchy as they were, offered a tersely convincing explanation of how they had come into being.

It was a brief, tersely worded statement ending with the fact that the ship had taken up a geostationary orbit some twenty-three thousand miles out in space.

Master Li tersely explained what had transpired, and Yen Shih appeared to hang on every word.

I tersely informed Sara of our sudden need, and she quickly created a platter of warmed pastries and hot mulled wine for me.

Jak said tersely, looking out the wide picture window in the living room at the pack of huge timber wolves.

I report tersely, angling my drone to pick up the battle raging just northwest of the capital city.

Tersely Joe recounted the main points of his conversation with Sarah Tyrrell and his impressions of her and her nephew.