laconism

From Latin Laconia, from Ancient Greek Λακεδαίμων (Lakedaímōn, “the region surrounding the city of Sparta”).

laconism (countable and uncountable, plural laconisms)

1. (uncountable, rhetoric) Extreme brevity in expression.
   • 1886, Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Chapter 20,

     “Well, where have you been?” he said to her with offhand laconism.

   • 1995, Steve Wulf, “The Passing of an Era,” Time, 24 April, 1995,

     […] Joe Montana is finally calling it quits. A retirement party in San Francisco and a press conference in Kansas City, Missouri, are planned for this week, and his agents are shopping him around to the networks as a broadcaster, even though Montana has a reputation for laconism.

2. (countable) A very or notably brief expression.
   • 1716, Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 2nd edition edited by Samuel Johnson, London: J. Payne, 1756, Part I, p. 37,

     The hand of PROVIDENCE writes often by abbreviatures, hieroglyphicks or short characters, which, like the Laconism on the wall, are not to be made out but by a hint or key from that SPIRIT which indited them.

   • 1882, Adolphus William Ward, Charles Dickens, London: Macmillan, Chapter 6, p. 154,

     Perhaps the most striking difference between [A Tale of Two Cities] and his other novels may seem to lie in the all but entire absence from it of any humour or attempt at humour; for neither the brutalities of that “honest tradesman” Jerry, nor the laconisms of Miss Pross, can well be called by that name.

• laconic

• limacons, limaçons