- terse
![youdao](/etym/ico/youdao.ico)
![iciba](/etym/ico/iciba.ico)
![Dict](/etym/ico/haici.ico)
[terse 词源字典] - terse: [17] Terse originally meant ‘polished, smooth’ (‘This man … so laboured upon it that he left it smooth and terse’, Helkiah Crooke, Description of the Body of Man 1615). By the 18th century, however, the associated notion of ‘neatness’ had led on to ‘neatly concise’. The word’s present-day negative connotations of ‘brusqueness’ seem to be a comparatively recent development. It was borrowed from tersus, the past participle of Latin tergēre ‘wipe’ (source also of English detergent).
=> detergent[terse etymology, terse origin, 英语词源] - terse (adj.)
![youdao](/etym/ico/youdao.ico)
![iciba](/etym/ico/iciba.ico)
![Dict](/etym/ico/haici.ico)
![YouDict](/etym/ico/youdict.ico)
- 1590s (implied in tersely), "clean-cut, burnished, neat," from French ters "clean," and directly from Latin tersus "wiped off, clean, neat," from past participle of tergere "to rub, polish, wipe." Sense of "concise or pithy in style or language" is from 1777, which led to a general sense of "neatly concise." The pejorative meaning "brusque" is a fairly recent development. Related: Terseness.