terser; tersest
1
: using few words : devoid of superfluity
a terse summary
2
: smoothly elegant : polished
tersely
adverb
terseness
noun
Examples of terse in a Sentence
Everything about him is tidy, from his terse wit to the flecks of gray hair that fall in precise iterations around the edges of his scalp.
—
Devin Gordon, Newsweek, 29 July 2002
… Johnston stays bolted to the wheelhouse floor, wrestling the helm and jotting down notes in the ship log. His entries are terse, bullet descriptions of the unending chaos outside.
—Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm, 1997
This vicious cycle was captured succinctly in Gandhi's terse warning that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
—David McCabe, Commonweal, 11 Apr. 1997
She accepts the caller's terse expression of sympathy and duly expresses in return her appreciation for that unenviable bit of message-bearing.
—John Barth, Harper's, January 1994
She gave me a few terse instructions and promptly left the room.
could tell from his terse replies to my questions that he was in no mood to talk
Devin Gordon, Newsweek, 29 July 2002
… Johnston stays bolted to the wheelhouse floor, wrestling the helm and jotting down notes in the ship log. His entries are terse, bullet descriptions of the unending chaos outside.
—Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm, 1997
This vicious cycle was captured succinctly in Gandhi's terse warning that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
—David McCabe, Commonweal, 11 Apr. 1997
She accepts the caller's terse expression of sympathy and duly expresses in return her appreciation for that unenviable bit of message-bearing.
—John Barth, Harper's, January 1994
She gave me a few terse instructions and promptly left the room.
could tell from his terse replies to my questions that he was in no mood to talk
Recent Examples on the Web
Once the threat level jumps to Defcon 1, so does the movie, and the cross-cutting between various parties issuing emergency orders and assessing the situation in terse acronym-heavy jargon begins in earnest.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 24 Oct. 2025
The email that said the career resource program for women would no longer be part of Google was terse and followed months of eroding support.
—Hadas Gold, CNN Money, 23 Oct. 2025
The director wrenches apart Ibsen’s terse and precise mechanism and makes room for a proliferation of arresting moments—caught on the wing in wide-screen images, thanks to Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography—that balance tragedy and horror with excitement and wonder.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2025
This pays off to some extent because Day-Lewis is such a mesmerizing presence, Ray’s gruff manner and terse communications hinting at dark mysteries to be revealed.
—David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 28 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for terse
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David Fear, Rolling Stone, 24 Oct. 2025
The email that said the career resource program for women would no longer be part of Google was terse and followed months of eroding support.
—Hadas Gold, CNN Money, 23 Oct. 2025
The director wrenches apart Ibsen’s terse and precise mechanism and makes room for a proliferation of arresting moments—caught on the wing in wide-screen images, thanks to Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography—that balance tragedy and horror with excitement and wonder.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2025
This pays off to some extent because Day-Lewis is such a mesmerizing presence, Ray’s gruff manner and terse communications hinting at dark mysteries to be revealed.
—David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 28 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for terse
Cite this Entry
“Terse.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terse. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.
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