• Pithy

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /ˈpɪθi/

    Origin

    pith + -y

    Full definition of pithy

    Adjective

    pithy

    1. Concise and meaningful.
      • 1825, William Hazlitt, , in ,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.
      • 1873 April 25, , in William Crookes (editor), The Chemical News,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."
      • 1876, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, , in ,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.
    2. Of, like, or abounding in pith.
      • 1863, Theodore Winthrop, , Part 2 – Introduction, published posthumously in ,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?
      • 1910, Liberty Hyde Bailey, , Suggestions and Reminders I: For the North, April,Parsnip.—Dig the roots before they grow and become soft and pithy.
      • 1911, , article in Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition,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.

    Synonyms

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