It is difficult to pin down the current, received meaning of laconic. A statistically meaningless straw poll suggests that in Australia at present it means something like ‘laid-back, relaxed’. I confess to having thought that was its proper meaning, but I lack a classical education.
In 1989, in Pacific Dunlop Ltd v Hogan, Justice Sheppard described Crocodile Dundee as being portrayed in the film of the same name
… in a laconic, laid-back style and yet [the feats of the character in the film] are all pervaded with a certain cockiness and insolence. All these characteristics are said to be dear to the hearts of many Australians and indeed to reveal the type of personality which Australians like to think they have, even if this involves a certain amount of self-deception.
In the Wisdom Interviews on ABC radio in December 2004, Bruce Petty said:
But it’s kind of a careless country, I think, it’s kind of a little bit indifferent. I mean we call it laconic and we call it nice names like laconic and casual and relaxed, but actually I just don’t think we give a stuff about an awful lot of issues, because we’ve never had to.
The ABC website refers to another person as having ‘a laconic attitude of having lived through personal reconciliation twenty years before it started’. Most people, I suspect, would hear the word used this way and understand without censure. Strictly, however, the word is misused in those quotations.
Laconic derives from Laconia, the kingdom ruled by Menelaus, according to Homer. Its capital was Sparta. The Spartans were noted for their simplicity, frugality, courage, and brevity of speech. The Laconic manner of speech was economical.
Johnson (1755; he spelled it laconick) defines it as ‘short; brief; from Lacones, the Spartans, who used few words’. Webster (1828) does not define laconic, but has an entry for laconical: ‘Short; brief; pithy; sententious; expressing much in few words, after the manner of the Spartans; as a laconic phrase.’ The OED2 defines laconic as: ‘Following the Laconian manner, esp. in speech and writing; brief, concise, sententious. Of persons: Affecting a brief style of speech.’
Washington Irving used laconic in the new sense, I think, when he wrote in The Tales of the Alhambra (1832): ‘By the time the laconic clock of the castle had struck two we had finished our dinner …’ If laconic is used in its proper meaning, this sentence is difficult to defend.
On the other hand, Jack London used it correctly in The Son of the Wolf (1900): ‘“Pack!” was his laconic greeting to Zarinska as he passed her lodge and hurried to harness his dogs.’ And a fine example of laconic expression is found in The Young Immigrants by Ring Lardner (1920): ‘“Shut up”, he explained.’
Some of our judges reveal their classical learning and literary accuracy in their use of the word, although it is not often found in judgements. In Grahamstown and Campvale Swamps Drainage Trust v Windeyer, Justice Isaacs said: ‘Some difficulty may be occasioned by the laconic direction of sub-s. 4.’ (The text of sub-s. 4 is not given in the judgement, perhaps in the interests of brevity.)
In R v Sutton Justice Wells referred to a witness having ‘a curt, laconic, manner of speech’. And in the Federal Court, laconic is favoured by Justices Ryan and Sundberg, and especially by Justice Mansfied who frequently notes that the reasons of the Refugee Review Tribunal are laconic (which they often are).
He might as well have said that the Tribunal’s reasons were delphic, which is certainly true at times. Delphic also derives from a Greek place name; Delphi was a town of ancient Greece on the slope of Mount Parnassus. It was home to the sanctuary of the oracle of Apollo. The oracle generally spoke cryptically, a fashion later emulated by writers of horoscopes, who cover uncertainty with ambiguity.
Before 1975, no judgement of the High Court used the word delphic, but now that text is the start and end of meaning, delphic has slipped into a few High Court judgements. In Australian Casualty Co Ltd v Federico, Chief Justice Gibbs said:
The judgements, in so far as they dealt with the question whether the injury was caused by accidental means, were short and a little delphic.
His Honour missed a chance to be demonstratively learned: he could have said ‘laconic and a little delphic’, but that might have been trowelling it on a bit.
Justices Brennan and Mason (as they were at the relevant times) also referred to the delphic qualities of judgements or documents, and Justice Kirby has done likewise. In the Federal Court, delphic has been favoured by Justices Finn, Hill, Drummond, and Dowsett. And Justice Gyles got in an elegant shot in Hart v DCT when he commented ‘nor do I regard what I have held as inconsistent with the rather delphic remarks of Justice McHugh in Spotless Services’.
Spartan, geographically related to laconic, is still understood largely in its proper meaning:
Characteristic or typical of Sparta, its inhabitants, or their customs; esp. distinguished by simplicity, frugality, courage, or brevity of speech.’ (OED2)
Few people these days would describe brevity of speech as spartan, but the balance of the definition accords with current usage. Sparta was originally called Lacedæmon, and Byron used the original name when he wrote ‘The Lords of Lacedæmon were true soldiers, But ours are Sybarites.’
Sparta was characterised by the austerity of its military leadership from the sixth to the second century BC. The ruling class of Sparta devoted itself to war and diplomacy, and paid no heed to the arts, philosophy, and literature. This regrettable tendency has been emulated more recently in some places.
Spartan is used only once in the High Court before 1975, and that single judicial marker is, appropriately, in a tax judgement during Sir Garfield Barwick’s time. Justice Mason used it deftly in FCT v Faichney:
The Commissioner has submitted that expenditure by a taxpayer on light and heating is deductible only if the light and heating are provided for the benefit of the taxpayer’s clients or customers, not if they are provided for the taxpayer’s sole benefit. A concession is made for the case where the climate is so cold and rigorous that heating is essential to enable work to be done. This is a Spartan view of s. 51 and in my opinion it is quite incorrect.
Not only has laconic shifted from its origins, but one component of the OED2 definition (‘brief, concise, sententious’) has also shifted from its original meaning. Sententious is not now understood as referring to brevity. It originally meant ‘of the nature of a “sentence” or aphoristic saying’. But then it drifted to ‘abounding in pointed maxims, aphoristic’, and so by degrees to its recent meaning of ‘affectedly or pompously formal’. Not at all laconic.
The central characteristic of the laconic and spartan styles is terseness. But terse has also shifted its meaning since it came into English in the seventeenth century. OED2 gives its original (now obsolete) meaning as ‘wiped, brushed; smoothed; clean-cut, sharp-cut; polished, burnished; neat, trim, spruce’. It comes from the Latin tergere ‘to wipe’. From there it drifted to ‘polished, refined, cultured’.
Johnson’s first edition (1755) defines terse as ‘smooth; cleanly written; neat; elegant without pompousness’. He illustrates this meaning with a quotation from Dryden:
To raw numbers and unfinish’d verse,
Sweet sound is added now to make it terse.
In Don Juan, Byron also used terse in its original sense:
I doubt if any now could make it worse
O’er his worst enemy when at his knees,
’T is so sententious, positive, and terse,
And decorates the book of Common Prayer,
As doth a rainbow the just clearing air.
From there, terse has since moved to its current meaning: ‘Freed from verbal redundancy; neatly concise; compact and pithy in style or language.’ But it has developed an edge. To be terse is now understood generally in a bad sense: brevity to the point of rudeness.
Curiously, then, terse, sententious, spartan, and laconic have drifted apart, diverging from their original, shared meaning towards rudeness, pomposity, hardiness, and amiability, respectively.