terse
adjective /tɜːs/
/tɜːrs/
- using few words and often not seeming polite or friendly
- a terse style
- The president issued a terse statement denying the charges.
- Although he was terse, he didn’t rage at me.
Oxford Collocations DictionaryTerse is used with these nouns:- nod
- reply
Word Originearly 17th cent.: from Latin tersus ‘wiped, polished’, from the verb tergere. The original sense was ‘polished, trim, spruce’, (relating to language) ‘polished, polite’, hence ‘concise and to the point’ (late 18th cent.).