mindmap root((CIS)) concise Brief and condensed, especially in expression or statement.
🌱Professor Childs's exam asked for a concise, one-page summary of the causes of the American Revolution. 🌳Many students think that adding unnecessary sentences with long words will make their writing more impressive. But in fact almost every reader values concision, since concise writing is usually easier to read, better thought out, and better organized—that is, simply better writing. Words such as short don't have the full meaning of concise, which usually means not just "brief" but "packed with information." excise To cut out, especially surgically.
🌱The ancient Minoans from the island of Crete apparently excised the hearts of their human sacrifices. 🌳Excise takes part of its meaning from the prefix ex-,"out." A writer may excise long passages of a novel to reduce it to a reasonable length, or a film director may excise a scene that might give offense. A surgeon may excise a large cancerous tumor, or make a tiny excision to examine an organ's tissue. Excise is also a noun, meaning a tax paid on something manufactured and sold in the U.S. Much of what consumers pay for tobacco or alcohol products go to cover the excise taxes that the state and federal government charge the manufacturers. But it's only accidental that this noun is spelled like the verb, since it comes from a completely different source. incisive Impressively direct and decisive.
🌱A few incisive questions were all that was needed to expose the weakness in the prosecutor's case. 🌳From its roots, incise means basically "to cut into." So just as a doctor uses a scalpel to make an incision in the skin, an incisive remark cuts into the matter at hand. A good analyst makes incisive comments about a news story, cutting through the unimportant details, and a good critic incisively identifies a book's strengths and weaknesses. precision Exactness and accuracy.
🌱By junior year she was speaking with greater precision, searching for exact words in place of the crude, awkward language of her friends. 🌳Many of us often use precision and accuracy as synonyms, but not scientists and engineers. For them, accuracy describes a particular measurement—that is, how close it is to the truth. But precision describes a measurement system—that is, how good it is at giving the same result every time it measures the same thing. This may be why even nonscientists now often speak of "precision instruments" for measuring, "precision landings" made by airplanes, "precision drilling" for natural gas, and so on.