telegraphic

comparative more telegraphic · superlative most telegraphic

1. Of, or relating to the telegraph.

   It turned out to be no more than the weekly Reuter’s telegram sent as an ordinary letter from the nearest telegraphic office fifty miles away.

   1965, Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God, Penguin Classics (2010), page 182

2. Brief or concise, especially resembling a telegram with clipped syntax.

   This section is based on […] I am presenting the facts in a telegraphic fashion; for the sources, discussion and disagreements see the five scholars I listed.

   2021, David Golinkin, “What is the Origin and History of the Bar Mitzvah Ceremony”, in Anat Helman, editor, No Small Matter: Features of Jewish Childhood

   2 more examples

   Her conversation, I soon found, was couched in the telegraphic style. “Weeds grow like house afire. Can’t keep even with ’em. Shall press you in. Better be careful.”

   1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 8

   As might be expected, words endowed with purely grammatical functions, like conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and articles, disappear first, giving rise to the so-called "telegraphic style."

   1987 [1956], Roman Jakobson, edited by Krystyna Pomorska Stephen Rudy, Language in Literature, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, →ISBN, page 106