Are you restless like me?

laconic \luh-KON-ik\, adjective:
Using or marked by the use of a minimum of words; brief and pithy; brusque.

Laconic comes, via Latin, from Greek Lakonikos, "of or relating to a Laconian or Spartan," hence "terse," in the manner of the Laconians.

Laconia was an ancient region of southern Greece in the southeastern Peloponnesus; Sparta was the capital. Its people were noted for being warlike and disciplined, and also for the brevity of their speech.

I was talking with my brother about some vocabulary words awhile back, and this was one of them. He told me a story about how his English class had vocabulary tests; the whole class had to know every single word because they were randomly picked and if they screwed up the class got points deducted. So, they would work together to remember them all, and they were trying to find some way to remember laconic. My brother pointed out that a cow is laconic. Now, there's no connection to cows other than that, but the whole class remembered the word. He claims that he recently asked a kid he still talks to from that class what laconic meant, and the kid immediately said "Like a cow!"

posted by Jennanana  # 10:41 PM