LACONIC • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Laconic

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/lɑkˈɑnɪk/ Listen

adjective

Laconic, Laconical adj.

Expressing much in few words, after the manner of the Laconians or Spartans; brief and pithy; concise; brusque; epigrammatic. In this sense laconic is the usual form. "I grow laconic even beyond laconicism; for sometimes I return only yes, or no, to questionary or petitionary epistles of half a yard long." "His sense was strong and his style laconic."

Laconian; characteristic of, or like, the Spartans; hence, stern or severe; cruel; unflinching. "His head had now felt the razor, his back the rod; all that laconical discipline pleased him well."

Synonyms: Short; brief; concise; succinct; sententious; pointed; pithy. Laconic, Concise. Concise means without irrelevant or superfluous matter; it is the opposite of diffuse. Laconic means concise with the additional quality of pithiness, sometimes of brusqueness.

noun

Laconic n. Laconism. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Laconic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Laconic" Quotes from Famous Books

... with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law end civility, it is to be wondered how useless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but their own laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious, but were as dissolute ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... sometimes intone fragments of prose in their festival orgies. They manifest little curiosity, and little power of mimicry, in which wild men generally excel the civilized.[99] The old Spartans were never so laconic. In conversation each says all he has to say in three or four words till his companion speaks, when he replies in the same curt, ejaculatory style. A long sentence, or a number of sentences at one time, we do not remember of hearing from the ...

— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... This laconic note contained all that Neb ought to know, and at the same time asked all that the colonists wished to know. It was folded and fastened to Top's collar in a ...

— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... the laconic reply. "Ingiris' danna san live in Japan, Japanese girl very nice. Ingiris' danna san go away, no want Japanese girl. Japanese girl no want go away Japan. Japanese girl go to other country, she feel very sick; heart very ...

— Kimono • John Paris

... Kai man will often say, "A ghost has just leaped from the tree into the cave; that is why the earth is shaking." Down below the ghosts are received by Tulmeng, lord of the nether world. Often he appears in a canoe to ferry them over to the further shore. "Blood or wax?" is the laconic question which he puts to the ghost on the bank. He means to say, "Were you killed or were you done to death by magic?" For it is with wax that the sorcerer stops up the fatal little tubes in which he encloses the souls of his enemies. And the reason why the lord of the dead puts the question ...

— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

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