• succinct •
Pronunciation: sêk-singkt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Terse, concise; short and to the point. 2. Tight, close-fitting, tightly wound around.
Notes: Two Cs back to back, one pronounced hard [k], the other soft [s], as in today's Good Word, is something of a rarity in English. It does occur in a few other words though, such as occipital [ahk-si-pê-têl]. The adverb for today's word is succinctly and the noun, succinctness. It is good to speak succinctly, which is to say, with succinctness.
In Play: The original meaning of today's Good Word is, alas, slowly fading from our vocabularies: "Her lustrous hair was wound around her head in succinct coils." She might also have been wearing a succinct dress if it fitted tightly. I think we should hang on to this sense of the word. Of course, we should also keep the current meaning in mind since it instructs us how to speak and write: "Fiona's succinct reply, 'Drop dead', left Wendell with the impression that she simply was not interested in what he had to say."
Word History: Middle English succincte "girded" came directly from Old French which inherited it from Latin succinctus, the past participle of succingere "to gird from underneath". This verb is made from sub "under, below" + cingere "to gird". The semantic connection here is in tightening up; tightening up our speech and writing makes it more succinct. English later borrowed the Spanish derivation of this same stem, cincha "saddle girth", to refer to the belt that holds a saddle on a horse, the cinch (belt). Making the cinch tight guarantees the security of the saddle, hence the metaphorical meaning of cinch is "a sure thing". (It is always a cinch that the words G. N. Bludworth suggests are as intriguing as this one, which he suggested for today.)
SUCCINCT
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I've always understood cinch in that sense, but never thought about where the expression came from.Making the cinch tight guarantees the security of the saddle, hence the metaphorical meaning of cinch is "a sure thing".
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