What's the difference between laconic and pithy?

Laconic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Laconical
  • (n.) Laconism.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Parties seek a sharper definition and a clearer purpose: voters rightly demand a reason to rule beyond Cameron’s laconic “because I thought I’d be good at it”.
  • (2) Just over two years later, Harvey, a 29-year-old with a laconic line in humour, can look back on it and joke about it.
  • (3) Miles, who spoke laconically and without passion, recommended that the tubes remain in place for several weeks at a stretch to minimize risk to a detainee.
  • (4) The author has revealed a classification based on systematization of most frequently observed pathology, that allows a laconic functional and topical diagnosis and provides phlebological patients with individualized treatment.
  • (5) As Clarke Reed, the former chair of the Mississippi Republican party who played a key role in the last contested convention in 1976, told the Guardian far more laconically, a contested convention this year is “likely to lead to all kinds of games being played”.
  • (6) Wittgenstein's reply is said to have been the laconic but absurdly cheerful: "Great!
  • (7) Spoofing the popular media that lamented the loss of a "great statesman", the weekly's headline laconically read: "Tragic ball at Colombey, one dead".
  • (8) You must have known,” Price says – laconic, nasal, one leg casually hitched up on the bench, endlessly jingling coins in his pocket – “that to give a senior public figure an arrest warning could lead to a complaint direct to the commissioner’s office.” Do you not see how important Mr Mitchell is?
  • (9) Kean dismissed the gesture with a laconic: "I didn't notice it."
  • (10) "We've all read the same spy novels," one said laconically.
  • (11) Mackenzie flew to Brazil this week as Ferreira came under increasing fire from local authorities, residents and media for what many saw as a laconic response to one of the South American nation’s worst mining disasters.
  • (12) Greater dementia severity in the SRD subjects was associated with laconic speech that was syntactially less complex.
  • (13) Probably not a good idea,” says a suitably laconic Chris Pratt in the trailer, which probably tells you everything you need to know here.
  • (14) Downing Street clarified the statement by laconically pointing out that "it's hardly surprising that UKTI DSO are seeking to promote defence exports – that's their job".
  • (15) At one point, Focus revealedon Monday, he had asked laconically why the police couldn't have waited until he was dead.
  • (16) Don’t expect a wild change of tack from Cohen, who turns 80 the day before the album comes out – Popular Problems is as laconic and gravelly as ever.
  • (17) From the start he was academically brilliant, in his off-beat and laconically concise way.
  • (18) At the end of a drive to Yucca, Arizona, 200 miles south-east of Vegas, we swung through the ranch gate and climbed out to a laconic “Howdy” from a cowpoke who introduced himself as Tex, the head wrangler.
  • (19) Official coverage in Russia of Novodvorskaya's passing has been muted, and President Putin's office issued a laconic statement .
  • (20) The problem with Dave is he’s so laconic, which I discovered recently is a posh person’s way of calling someone bone idle.

Pithy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Consisting wholly, or in part, of pith; abounding in pith; as, a pithy stem; a pithy fruit.
  • (superl.) Having nervous energy; forceful; cogent.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And while Altmejd presents sexual scenes of cartoonish horror and disgust, Lucas's art has embraced lavatorial humour, abjection, self-denigration, the pithy sculptural one-liner and the obscene gesture.
  • (2) This headline is a closely packed, multifaceted, pithy, rousing, basically perfect example of how strikes are presented in the tabloids, and have been for years.
  • (3) In fact, her pithy insults are deployed so regularly that colleagues on the spending watchdog have come up with the idea of playing “Margaret Hodge bingo”, scoring points when one of her putdowns pops out.
  • (4) The reshuffle had inspired some pithy one-liners and the PM was determined to deploy them all.
  • (5) Someone who bought tickets for a tennis event at the O2 sent me this pithy tweet: “4 tickets.
  • (6) There are plenty of 30-page documents and pithy slogans – but, as far as I can discover, nothing in between.
  • (7) It was a pithy line that feeds into the schtick about a bloated Brussels filled with born bureaucrats.
  • (8) The hawkish senator also defined his foreign policy: “A clenched fist and an open hand, you choose.” But the extent to which such pithy quips will help bolster Graham’s campaign – the senator is currently polling at 0.5% – remains questionable.
  • (9) But he has left Labour vulnerable over Brexit because the policy is so nuanced it cannot easily be boiled down to a pithy remark .
  • (10) Shortly after the YouTube sensation that was Jeremy Paxman's October interview with Russell Brand , Paxman wrote a pithy column about his disillusion with Westminster politics.
  • (11) Johnson, whose pithy interventions have caused embarrassment for all the major parties since the election campaign kicked off, opened the debate by stressing the gulf between the two major parties’ tax and spending plans.
  • (12) Sated by three years of Special One pyrotechnics, the British press might be ready to be charmed by Ramos' brand of quietly pithy humour.
  • (13) Obama: While the president generally struggled to get his "zingers" across, over-larding them with too much detail, he did get in a pithy dig about Romney's vague budget proposals which he claimed didn't add up.
  • (14) Jimmy Fallon, the host of the 2017 Golden Globes, has made a career of creating pithy viral moments that transcend television and resonate on the internet, but at this year’s ceremony the host was outdone by a bizarre recurring slip-up.
  • (15) In the months since their formation, the eight members of Pussy Riot have perfected their own form of protest: their songs are pithy, angry missives, largely directed at Putin, and they remain beguilingly anonymous – the band wear neon balaclavas to conceal their identities and perform flash gigs in unexpected places: on public transport, for example, and, once, on a prison roof.
  • (16) Instead, finance ministers signed up to a pithy list of bullet points, pledging to unleash all the policy weapons at their disposal against the crisis.
  • (17) The club was the brainchild of New Jersey shoe salesman Barney Josephson: a pithy antidote to the snooty, often racist elitism of other New York nightspots.
  • (18) But threnodies are not an argument, and memories are definitely not facts (Hobsbawm's pithy condemnation of oral history, delivered at a conference where I was due to speak, was terrifying).
  • (19) From a leader not known for her trenchant words or pithy sound bites her strong stance of the past few days has come as a surprise.
  • (20) You might expect he’d specialise in pithy one-liners, but in fact Delaney spins longer yarns onstage, all powered by a spirit of relentless cynicism.