These adjectives stress brevity in speech or writing, the avoidance of any wasted words. Terse goes back to a Latin verb meaning to rub off or rub down. By etymology, it suggests polished style as well as pointed phrasing, implying elegance as well as economy of expression: a terse , vigorous style. In present use, terse emphasizes extreme compactness, concentrated force and a strict sticking to the point: a terse note of dismissal with no explanation. Laconic literally means like a Spartan, with reference to the habitual terseness of Spartan speech. A laconic speaker is so sparing with words as to seem stingy or exceptionally self-controlled.

• He was reserved and laconic , a close-mouthed man; She said with laconic brevity, "We’ve lost."

Both a terse and a laconic remark may be so brief as to seem curt. But where a terse remark is complete and its brevity may be due to the pressure of circumstances, a laconic remark may be puzzling and may suggest a deliberate taciturnity: a terse battlefield command; "Trust me" was his laconic reply. Terse and laconic imply a certain austerity of utterance, but succinct suggests a more reasonable rationing of words. Succinct comes from Latin roots meaning to gird underneath. It implies compression, the avoidance of elaboration, the exclusion of extraneous detail. Hence a succinct statement is brief, clear and concise, being confined to main points or essential meaning: a succinct summary of a lengthy treatise.

The remaining adjectives emphasize content. Pithy literally means full of pith, and pith is the essential part of anything ?the tissue at the centre of a stem, the marrow of a bone. Hence a pithy remark is one full of meaning and substance; it is both brief and forceful, containing the gist of a matter in concentrated form: a pithy aphorism; the pithy couplets of Alexander Pope. Compendious , like pithy , stresses substance, but substance drawn from many sources and summarized. A compendious work is both brief and comprehensive, encompassing and condensing a great mass of material: a compendious account of the Koran War; It required a true scholar to digest so much material and organize it into so compendious an introduction. Sententious comes from a Latin word meaning opinion. It indicates the condensing of general truths or moral principles into pithy maxims or aphorisms: the sententious wisdom of the Book of Proverbs. By extension, sententious may connote a moralizing attitude or a pompous, all-knowing tone: a speaker too sententious not to be tiresome.