aphoristic

aph·o·rism

(ăf′ə-rĭz′əm)

1. A tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion; an adage. See Synonyms at saying.

2. A brief statement of a scientific principle.

[French aphorisme, from Old French, from Late Latin aphorismus, from Greek aphorismos, from aphorizein, to delimit, define : apo-, apo- + horizein, to delimit, define; see horizon.]

aph′o·rist n.

aph′o·ris′tic (-rĭs′tĭk) adj.

aph′o·ris′ti·cal·ly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

aphoristic

(ˌæfəˈrɪstɪk)

adj

1. of, relating to, or resembling an aphorism

2. tending to write or speak in aphorisms

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

aph•o•ris•tic

(ˌæf əˈrɪs tɪk)

adj.

1. of, like, or containing aphorisms.

2. given to using aphorisms.

[1745–55]

aph`o•ris′ti•cal•ly, adv.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Switch to new thesaurus

Adj.	1.	aphoristic - containing aphorisms or maxims; "axiomatic wisdom" axiomatic
	2.	aphoristic - terse and witty and like a maxim; "much given to apothegmatic instruction" epigrammatic, apothegmatic concise - expressing much in few words; "a concise explanation"

aphoristic

adjective

Precisely meaningful and tersely cogent:

compact, epigrammatic, epigrammatical, marrowy, pithy.

Informal: brass-tacks.

Idioms: down to brass tacks, to the point.

Translations

aforistický

aforistisk

aphoristic

[ˌæfəˈrɪstɪk] ADJ → aforístico

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

aphoristic

adj → aphoristisch

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

References in periodicals archive ?

When those not under your authority, whether divine or administrative, assumed your voice aphoristic enough, to scare stokers off their tinder of bloody neo-colonization, it is an honour only God can bestow.

The Riot Over Pastor Adeboye

While Lababidi shares a profound connection with the great Sufi mystics and their penchant for aphoristic writing, his voice is unique, deeply modern, and steeped with a warm sense of humor.

Yahia Lababidi: Where Epics Fail: Meditations to Live By

And why do some of our most celebrated modern philosophers use aphoristic fragments to convey their deepest ideas?

What We Are Reading Today: A Theory of the Aphorism

The risk that Roy took certainly has paid off; even in the most opaque aphoristic paragraphs so characteristic of his later writings, there are insights and suggestive connections between ideas and concrete ethnographic information that can serve as seeds for detailed ethnographic investigations and constructive reflections on human cultural life-worlds.

In Memoriam: Roy Wagner (1938-2018) - An Anthropologist Extraordinaire

"In Ball's unadorned, aphoristic prose, the meetings stand like self-contained fables, and together these fables tell us much about the son, the people he meets and the society they form....

Census

These terse, aphoristic essays are unsurpassed in comprehensiveness and depth of understanding, examining not only battlefield maneuvers, but also relevant economic, political, and psychological factors.

GulfWeeklyBookClub -- in association with The Bookcase

Harvey's oft-cited marginal note to his 1598 edition of Chaucer's Workes distinguishes between different types of writing and different types of readers, singling out Lucrece and Hamlet as pleasing "the wiser sort." Kisery identifies the latter, "wiser sort," as those reading for political knowledge, and then wisely follows up this supposition by attending to Hamlet's recurring use of political maxims, which mirrors the aphoristic style associated with Machiavelli.

Hamlet's Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge in Early Modern England

Written in an aphoristic style that at its best rivals that of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, two of his primary referents here, the Black Notebooks return repeatedly to the perceived failure of Being and Time to present adequately a radical questioning of being.

Heidegger, Martin. Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938

Yet this pronouncement was as enigmatic as it was aphoristic, ripe for misinterpretation.

Amie Siegel: Simon Preston

Adnan's sentences are aphoristic. They are sentences in the classical, Latin sense of the word.

Etel Adnan, Premonition

An amalgam of uncontrived prose and aphoristic, sometimes absurd poetic language shimmers and shifts through the refracting rhetorical frameworks employed by Melissa Bull in her debut poetry collection, Rue.

Rue

At times, O'Malley's irreverent New York Irish humor resembles Oscar Wilde's wit with its aphoristic apercus.