{"id":1788,"date":"2011-02-23T07:04:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T12:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattangre.com\/blog\/?p=1788"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:49:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:38","slug":"origin-stories-laconic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/origin-stories-laconic\/","title":{"rendered":"Origin Stories: Laconic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"child superhero\" src=\"\/\/manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/01\/superhero-sm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" class=\"alignright\" \/><em>&#8220;Origin story&#8221; is an expression for a superhero&#8217;s backstory &#8212; for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed.  Many words also have fascinating origin stories.  While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you&#8217;ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/laconic\">Laconic<\/a> means &#8220;using few words, concise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The boss was famously <em>laconic<\/em>; after allowing his employees to present their new plan for an entire hour, he finally responded, Confirmed.\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some related words: <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/reticent\">reticent<\/A> and <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/taciturn\">taciturn<\/A> (not talking much) are often used to describe shy people and do not have the sense of getting the point across efficiently\u009d than <em>laconic<\/em> does. <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/pithy\">Pithy<\/A>, however, takes this idea even further \u201c it means getting the point across in just a few, cleverly-chosen words.<\/p>\n<p><em>Laconic<\/em> comes from the Greek place name Laconia, the region in which Sparta (which of course gives us <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/spartan\">spartan<\/a>) was located. A famous story has an invading general threatening, If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground.\u009d The Spartans laconically replied, If.\u009d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/03\/300-28-1024x426.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"300_28\" width=\"400\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1814\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/03\/300-28-1024x426.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/03\/300-28-300x125.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/03\/300-28.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Origin story&#8221; is an expression for a superhero&#8217;s backstory &#8212; for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","category-verbal","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7280,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions\/7280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1788"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}