Concise

How to spell concise

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce concise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does concise mean?

1. adjectiveExpressing a great deal in few words; brief but comprehensive.

Concise in a sentence

• The manager asked for a concise summary of the quarterly figures.

• Her concise reply answered the question without any wasted words.

Where does concise come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Concise comes from the Latin concisus, the past participle of concidere, which meant 'to cut up' or 'to cut down'. That verb joined the intensive prefix con- to caedere, the everyday Latin verb 'to cut', so the literal image is of language that has been trimmed and cut short until only the essential parts remain. English adopted the word in the late 1500s, taking it directly from the Latin sense of brief and trimmed-down speech rather than through French. The same caedere root surfaces in a whole family of English words about cutting, including 'incision', 'scissors', 'precise', and even 'homicide'. Knowing that the middle is the cutting element 'cise', the same ending found in 'precise', helps explain why the word ends in -cise and not -size or -sice.

How the word is built

• con- (intensive, thoroughly)
• cise (from caedere: to cut)