"brevity is the soul of wit" meaning in English

See brevity is the soul of wit in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Audio: en-us-brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit.ogg [US]
Etymology: Coined by William Shakespeare in 1602 in "Hamlet," act 2, scene 2: : Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, : And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, : I will be brief: your noble son is mad... Etymology templates: {{coin|en|William Shakespeare|in=1602}} Coined by William Shakespeare in 1602 Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=}} brevity is the soul of wit, {{en-proverb}} brevity is the soul of wit
  1. Conciseness of expression is an essential characteristic of astute, perceptive, or witty remarks. Translations (conciseness is essential to witty remarks): خير الكلام ما قل ودل (Arabic), 言以簡為貴 (Chinese Mandarin), 言以简为贵 (yán yǐ jiǎn wéi guì) (Chinese Mandarin), 言貴簡潔 (Chinese Mandarin), 言贵简洁 (yánguìjiǎnjié) (Chinese Mandarin), korthed er videns sjæl (Danish), lyhyestä virsi kaunis (Finnish), la brièveté est l’âme de l’esprit (French), in der Kürze liegt die Würze (German), संक्षिप्तता बुद्धि की आत्मा है (saṅkṣiptatā buddhi kī ātmā hai) (Hindi), la brevidad es el alma del talento (Spanish)

Download JSON data for brevity is the soul of wit meaning in English (5.0kB)

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          "word": "خير الكلام ما قل ودل"
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          "roman": "yánguìjiǎnjié",
          "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
          "word": "言贵简洁"
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          "code": "da",
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          "word": "korthed er videns sjæl"
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          "lang": "Finnish",
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          "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
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      "code": "ar",
      "lang": "Arabic",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "خير الكلام ما قل ودل"
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      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "言以簡為貴"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "yán yǐ jiǎn wéi guì",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "言以简为贵"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "言貴簡潔"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "yánguìjiǎnjié",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "言贵简洁"
    },
    {
      "code": "da",
      "lang": "Danish",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "korthed er videns sjæl"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "lyhyestä virsi kaunis"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "la brièveté est l’âme de l’esprit"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "in der Kürze liegt die Würze"
    },
    {
      "code": "hi",
      "lang": "Hindi",
      "roman": "saṅkṣiptatā buddhi kī ātmā hai",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "संक्षिप्तता बुद्धि की आत्मा है"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "note": "кра́ткость — сестра́ таланта (krátkostʹ — sestrá talanta)",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "conciseness is essential to witty remarks",
      "word": "la brevidad es el alma del talento"
    }
  ],
  "word": "brevity is the soul of wit"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.