Word of the Day

: April 14, 2018

succinct

adjective suk-SINKT

What It Means

: marked by compact precise expression without wasted words

succinct in Context

"[Ninni] Holmqvist's writing is spare in style, elegantly succinct, but the layers of the world she's created are manifold." — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 25 July 2017

"[Steve] Bartels' keynote, at a succinct 30 minutes, managed to cover broad ground, including the surge of interest in hip-hop thanks to streaming, which has brought new interest in the genre's catalog." — Leila Cobo, Billboard.com, 7 June 2017

Did You Know?

The history of succinct might not be short, but it's a cinch to remember. Succinct traces to Latin succinctus ("tightly wrapped, concise"), which comes from the verb cingere ("to gird"), the word that gave us cincture and cinch. In its earliest uses succinct meant "confined" or "girded up," and, as such, it was often used in reference to garments encircled by a band. Eventually, succinct was extended to the realm of insects, where it meant "supported by a band of silk around the middle" (as in "the succinct pupa of a butterfly"). Later, the word was applied to writings. A "succinct" piece of writing is "compressed" or "compact" and uses as few words as possible.