English Dictionary: terse | by the DICT Development Group |
3 results for terse | |
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]: | |
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: | |
Terse \Terse\, a. [Compar. {Terser}; superl. {Tersest}.] [L. tersus, p. p. of tergere to rub or wipe off.] 1. Appearing as if rubbed or wiped off; rubbed; smooth; polished. [Obs.] Many stones, . . . although terse and smooth, have not this power attractive. --Sir T. Browne. 2. Refined; accomplished; -- said of persons. [R. & Obs.] [bd]Your polite and terse gallants.[b8] --Massinger. 3. Elegantly concise; free of superfluous words; polished to smoothness; as, terse language; a terse style. Terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence. --Macaulay. A poet, too, was there, whose verse Was tender, musical, and terse. --Longfellow. Syn: Neat; concise; compact. Usage: {Terse}, {Concise}. Terse was defined by Johnson [bd]cleanly written[b8], i. e., free from blemishes, neat or smooth. Its present sense is [bd]free from excrescences,[b8] and hence, compact, with smoothness, grace, or elegance, as in the following lones of Whitehead: [bd]In eight terse lines has Ph[91]drus told (So frugal were the bards of old) A tale of goats; and closed with grace, Plan, moral, all, in that short space.[b8] It differs from concise in not implying, perhaps, quite as much condensation, but chiefly in the additional idea of [bd]grace or elegance.[b8] -- {Terse"ly}, adv. -- {Terse"ness}, n. | |
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
Terse Language for decryption of hardware logic. ["Hardware Logic Simulation by Compilation", C. Hansen, 25th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf, 1988]. |