The noun for the quality of being terse — the state of using very few words, in a way that often feels cold or impatient. You use it when you want to talk about the shortness itself as a thing: the terseness of his email, a certain terseness in her voice, the terseness of the official statement. Because it is a noun made from an adjective, it feels a step more formal than the adjective, and you meet it more in writing than in speech. It has the same two flavours as terse. Usually it is a small criticism, or at least a noticing: you comment on someone's terseness because it struck you as unfriendly. But in reviews and writing classes it can be a compliment — the terseness of Hemingway's prose means its cleanness, its refusal to waste words.

簡短生硬；言簡意賅（指「話很少、很乾」這件事本身）