terse

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin tersus (“wiped, clean, neat, polished”), the past participle of tergeō (“to rub, wipe, polish”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Barnhart and Etymonline add borrowed from French ters (“clean”) as a source beside Latin.^[5][4] Further back, Etymonline calls the Latin verb of uncertain origin,^[4] while Klein and Merriam-Webster connect it with Ancient Greek τρώγω (trṓgō, “to gnaw”), τρώγλη (trṓglē, “hole”) and Gothic 𐌸𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌺𐍉 (þaírkō, “hole”),^[6][7] Klein from an enlargement of Proto-Indo-European *ter- (“to go through, pass beyond”),^[6] and Merriam-Webster with terō (“to rub”).^[7] Partridge asks whether it is a variant, without the initial s-, of a Greek word for a scraper.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Wiped, polished, burnished; clean-cut, neat, spruce: 1602, in Ben Jonson's Poetaster.^[2][7] Barnhart and Etymonline find the adjective implied in the adverb tersely in 1599, in Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

The word first described physical smoothness, and Ayto quotes Helkiah Crooke (1615) on something left "smooth and terse".^[9] It soon moved to manners and language, meaning polite, polished and refined: the OED first has this in 1628, in the third edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,^[2] and Barnhart in 1621, in the same book.^[5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "smooth" and as "cleanly written; neat; elegant without pompousness", and in 1773 marked "smooth" as out of use.^[10] From polished language came the current sense: concise, freed of redundancy, recorded from 1777, in W. Whitehead's Goat's Beard.^[2][5][4] The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins explains it as language from which everything unnecessary has been trimmed away,^[11] and Ayto as the notion of neatness leading on to "neatly concise".^[9] The negative sense, brusque or curt, is a fairly recent development.^[9][4] For a few years in the 17th century the word was applied to claret, from 1671, in Shadwell's Humorists.^[2]

Timeline

• 1599 – implied in tersely, neatly.^[5][4]
• 1602 – wiped, polished, burnished; neat, spruce.^[2][7]
• 1628 – of language or people, polished, refined.^[2]
• 1671 – applied to claret (obsolete by 1687).^[2]
• 1777 – neatly concise, compact and pithy in style.^[2][5][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Using few words; neatly concise and to the point: The memo gave a terse summary of the budget.^[12][7][2]
2. Of a person's manner or speech: curt or abrupt: Her terse reply ended the conversation.^[12][13]
3. (obsolete, 1628–1774) Smoothly elegant; polished or refined, especially of language.^[2][13]
4. (archaic, 1602–1824) Rubbed clean; burnished; neat or trim.^[2][7][13]

Word family

• tersely
• terseness

Related words

• detergent
• deterge
• absterge
• abstersion
• detersion
• troglodyte

Usage notes

Wright records a separate obsolete terse in northern Scots, a dispute or debate, and as a verb, to dispute or contend.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)