Will the Real Opposite of “Verbose” Please Stand Up?

Doesn't get much more verbose than that.

A little Friday fun and something to ponder.  My good friend Sue and I often talk about words and their meanings.  Often times we’ll make up words or acronyms as our fearless Cazbah leader Charles Broersma likes to do.  Somehow this week we got on the subject of such words and vernacular and verbose.

Here are the definitions according to Dictionary.com.

Vernacular:  of or pertaining to such a language.

Verbose:  characterized by the use of many or too many words

I like to say that Charles is a “vernacularist” (which is my made up word) when it comes to the language of Cazbah.    When you provide internet marketing and community management services for small business, there are many words that can describe that, but some words are better created from scratch to describe the uniqueness of Cazbah’s business.

My definition of vernacularist would be ‘speaking in dialect pertaining to such a language’.  Charles is great at creating words that actually mean something to Cazbah employees and make perfect sense when spoken without a definition provided – brilliant in my mind!  To those outside of Cazbah these words may require further explanation, therefore these words are vernacular.

As we dug deeper into this subject, we started pondering the term verbose and the question was asked “if verbose is too many words, what is the opposite of that”?    According to Dictionary.com and Opposite-Word.com the opposite of verbose is concise or laconic.  I have to tell you I disagree, and here’s why.  The definitions are as follows:

Concise:  expressing or covering much in few words; brief in form but comprehensive in scope

Laconic:  using few words; expressing much in few words

Now expressing something in few words, but being comprehensive and getting to the point is concise (unlike this sentence).  The opposite of Verbose, however, might be defined as  “not having used enough words to make ones point” or  ”the inability to make ones point due to finding ones self at a loss for words“.  THAT is the opposite of verbose in my mind.

Being concise gets the point across in few words, but not TOO few words.  Verbose gets the point across with using too may words.  If there were not enough words (which is the opposite of too many words), then the point would not be made (like this post).  I might propose a new word for the opposite of verbose to add to my vernacular, and the nominees are:

• inverbose
• unverbacious
• verbaciousless

Can you tell me in a concise manner what your opposite might be?  A little fun for a Friday – use as many or as few words as you like!  (Yes, I’m still talking…)  Hopefully I’ve made my point in a very verbose manner that to be concise would be nice, but would also use just enough words.