This week’s theme
Uncommon adjectives

This week’s words
stuporous
rorid
nidorous
macilent
breviloquent


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PRONUNCIATION:

(bre-VIL-uh-kwuhnt)

MEANING:

adjective: Using few words.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin brevis (short) + loqui (to speak). Earliest documented use: 1865.

NOTES:

The delicious irony is that a word meaning “using few words” is four syllables and twelve letters long. It makes up for the number of words with length. Near-synonyms include laconic and pauciloquent; the opposite is loquacious.

At the risk of failing to be breviloquent, there is no lack of other ways you could speak:

• speaking too much: pleniloquence
• speaking pompously: magniloquent, grandiloquent, altiloguent, speechify, declaim, or bloviate
• speaking foolishly: stultiloquy
• speaking without moving lips: ventriloquism
• speaking while sleeping: somniloquy
• speaking while spraying saliva: sialoquent

USAGE:

“[The driver] raised his hands from the wheel in a ‘What can you do?’ shrug. For once, the exchange was breviloquent.”
Tara Gallagher; Gratitude: Don’t Mention It; Town & Country (New York); Nov 2012.

See more usage examples of breviloquent in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: