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A gnome is an aphorism—that is, an observation or sentiment reduced to the form of a saying. Gnomes are sometimes couched in metaphorical or figurative language, they are often quite clever, and they are always concise. We borrowed the word gnome in the 16th century from the Greeks, who based their gnome on the verb gignōskein, meaning "to know." (The other gnome—referring to the dwarf of folklore—comes from New Latin and is unrelated to the aphoristic gnome.) We began using gnomic, the adjective form of gnome, in the late 18th century. It describes a style of writing, or sometimes speech, characterized by pithy phrases, which are often terse to the point of mysteriousness.
Examples of gnomic in a Sentence
Jan Swafford, The Atlantic, 29 Oct. 2024
The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki Bourbaki was gnomic and mythical, impossible to pin down; his mathematics just the opposite: unified, unambiguous, free of human idiosyncrasy.
—JSTOR Daily, 24 June 2024
For him, even talking about the show, analyzing its secret sauce, is offered up with a certain gnomic reticence.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 14 June 2024
Although this terse and gnomic message was hardly the stuff of congratulations, Biden père—as Vice-President, and as America’s anti-corruption point man in Kyiv—might have altered the course of recent U.S. history simply by telling his son no.
—Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 13 Dec. 2023
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Cite this Entry
“Gnomic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gnomic. Accessed 17 Dec. 2024.
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