LACONIC • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Laconic

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/lɑkˈɑnɪk/ Listen

adjective

Laconic, Laconical adj.

Expressing much in few words, after the manner of the Laconians or Spartans; brief and pithy; concise; brusque; epigrammatic. In this sense laconic is the usual form. "I grow laconic even beyond laconicism; for sometimes I return only yes, or no, to questionary or petitionary epistles of half a yard long." "His sense was strong and his style laconic."

Laconian; characteristic of, or like, the Spartans; hence, stern or severe; cruel; unflinching. "His head had now felt the razor, his back the rod; all that laconical discipline pleased him well."

Synonyms: Short; brief; concise; succinct; sententious; pointed; pithy. Laconic, Concise. Concise means without irrelevant or superfluous matter; it is the opposite of diffuse. Laconic means concise with the additional quality of pithiness, sometimes of brusqueness.

noun

Laconic n. Laconism. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Laconic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Laconic" Quotes from Famous Books

... think's my latest?" he asked, and he gave a low chuckle which Roger liked. "Last week I was a brewer, to-day I'm an engineer," he said. "Can you beat it? A building contractor. Me." And as he smoked his cigarette, in laconic phrases he explained how a huge steel construction concern had gone to the wall, through building skyscrapers "on spec" and outstripping even the growth of New York. "They got into court last week," he said, "and the judge handed me ...

— His Family • Ernest Poole

... laconic order, which I instantly despatched to General Ferino. I acquainted my cousin with what had passed, and remained at ease as to the result of ...

— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... the gnomon—the wound is in the front—your snout is broken, but your honour is whole. Would it be so, were the Gael to allege, that "her nainsell had coupit you by a pig kick on her preach?" By all the gods, he of the laconic garment, the "thousand hill man," would have been careering on a cloud after his "freen" Ossian, with the moon shining through him, within ...

— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... Cambridge there; but I was sceptical of the direction the Cambridge horse-car took when I found it, and I hinted to the driver my anxieties as to why he should be starting east when I had been told that Cambridge was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... reference brought to notice is in a laconic correspondence between the Emperor Nicephorus of Constantinople, successor to the Princess Irene, and the famous Harun Ar Rashid of Bagdad, the fifth of the Abbasside dynasty, in 802, which mentions Pawn and Rook, implying that his predecessor in paying tribute resembled ...

— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

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