pithy

comparative pithier · superlative pithiest

1. Concise and meaningful.

   IT was a pithy saying that of Lorenzo de' Medici, and true as pithy, that we are enjoined to forgive our enemies, but nowhere are we told that we should forgive our friends.

   1876, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, “On the Gratitude we owe our Enemies”, in Shells from the Sands of Time

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   Mr. Lamb, on the contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers.

   1825, William Hazlitt, “Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon”, in The Spirit of the Age […] , London: Printed for Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC

   The following passage, which is exquisitely pithy and exquisitely modest, winds up the description:- "In this apparatus there is nothing new but its simplicity and thorough trustworthiness."

   1873 April 25, “Obituary - Justus Liebig”, in William Crookes, editor, The Chemical News

   […], a guy w/o sunglasses or hauteur who throws open the pressurized doors to the Dreamward’s Bridge and galley and Vacuum Sewage System and personally takes me through, offering pithy and quotable answers to questions before I’ve even asked them.

   1997, David Foster Wallace, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group

   Synonyms: terse, concise, laconic, succinct

2. Of, like, or abounding in pith; spongy or having small holes or pits.

   1910, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Manual of Gardening, Suggestions and Reminders I: For the North, April, Parsnip.—Dig the roots before they grow and become soft and pithy.

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   1863, Theodore Winthrop, “The Heart of the Andes”, Part 2 – Introduction, published posthumously in Life in the Open Air and other papers, Must we know the torrid zone only through travelled bananas, plucked too soon and pithy? or by bottled anacondas? or by the tarry-flavored slang of forecastle-bred paroquets?

   To summarize the characters of a true mushroom - it grows only in pastures; it is of small size, dry, and with unchangeable flesh; the cap has a frill; the gills are free from the stem, the spores brown-black or deep purple-black in colour, and the stem solid or slightly pithy.

   1911, “Mushroom”, in Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

3. ScotlandarchaicVigorous, powerful, strong; substantial.

   His bairns a’ before the flood / Had langer tack o’ fleſh and blood, / And on mair pithy ſhanks they ſtood / Than Noah’s line, / Wha ſtill hae been a feckleſs brood / Wi’ drinking wine.

   1773 January 21, R[obert] Fergusson, “Caller Water”, in The Weekly Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement, Edinburgh: […] Wal[ter] Ruddiman, →OCLC, page 114, column 2

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   Next, from the well-air’d ancient town of Crail, / Go out her craftsmen with tumultuous din, / Her wind-bleach’d fishers, garrulous and thin; / And some are flush’d with horns of pithy ale, […]

   1812, [William Tennant], “Approach of Spring Described. […]”, in Anster Fair, a Poem. […], Edinburgh: […] [F]or William Cockburn, […] [b]y Oliver & Boyd, […], →OCLC, stanza XIX, page 33

   Great freshwater lakes sweep away inland from the very verge of the sea, parted from them only by pebble-banks and ridge of shingle—a sea without rocks or cliff, but the worst in England for shipwrecks—all shoals as far as you can see—water thick and pithy with sand.

   1867 January 10, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “To Edwin Harrison”, in Cecil Y[elverton] Lang, editor, The Swinburne Letters, volume 3 (1875–1877), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, published 1960, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 112