Home › Glossary › Letter C

Conciseness

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The quality of expressing much with few words in poetry or prose

Detailed Definition
Conciseness in poetry is the virtue of expressing ideas or emotions with the fewest necessary words, avoiding redundancy or ornament in favor of clarity and impact; it is a hallmark of epigrammatic and modernist traditions, where every syllable must earn its place through precision and resonance.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Bashō’s haiku, “An old silent pond… / A frog jumps into the pond— / Splash! Silence again” achieves conciseness through seasonal reference and sound; In Emily Dickinson’s “Much Madness is divinest Sense,” aphoristic conciseness critiques societal norms; In Kay Ryan’s “Turtle,” every word bears weight in compressed philosophy; In Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips,” “these hips are mighty hips” uses conciseness for assertion; In Aram Saroyan’s “lighght,” conciseness merges visual and verbal innovation.
Additional Notes
Conciseness|The quality of being brief but comprehensive, expressing much in few words; a goal of effective poetic language; related terms include compression (5821) and Concise statement (5779).
Also Known As
brevity terseness economy of words Brevity (concision)
Skip to main content