Terse, a. [Compar. Terser; superl. Tersest.]
Etymology: [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.] "Your polite and terse gallants." 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. Terse, Concise. Terse was defined by Johnson "cleanly written", i. e., free from blemishes, neat or smooth. Its present sense is "free from excrescences," and hence, compact, with smoothness, grace, or elegance, as in the following lones of Whitehead: - "In eight terse lines has Phædrus told (So frugal were the bards of old) A tale of goats; and closed with grace, Plan, moral, all, in that short space." It differs from concise in not implying, perhaps, quite as much condensation, but chiefly in the additional idea of "grace or elegance." -- Terse"ly, adv. -- Terse"ness, n.
Shades of meaning
Anything short or brief is of relatively small extent. That which is concise (L. con-, with, together, and caedo, cut) is trimmed down, and that which is condensed (L. con-, with, together, and densus, thick) is, as it were, pressed together, so as to include as much as possible within a small space. That which is compendious (L. com-, together, and pendo, weigh) gathers the substance of a matter into a few words, weighty and effective. The succinct (L. succinctus, from sub-, under, and cingo, gird; girded from below) has an alert effectiveness as if girded for action. The summary is compacted to the utmost, often to the point of abruptness; as, we speak of a summary statement or a summary dismissal. That which is terse (L. tersus, from tergo, rub off) has an elegant and finished completeness within the smallest possible compass, as if rubbed or polished down to the utmost. A sententious style is one abounding in sentences that are singly striking or memorable, apart from the context; the word may be used invidiously of that which is pretentiously oracular. A pithy utterance gives the gist of a matter effectively, whether in rude or elegant style.