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.
Usage: {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 Ph[ae]drus 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.