telegraphese : M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for October 22 is:

telegraphese \tel-uh-graf-EEZ\ noun
: language characterized by the terseness and ellipses that are common in telegrams

Example sentence:
The translator couldn't keep up with the speaker, so what we heard of the speech sounded like telegraphese.

Did you know?
E-mail's the thing nowadays, but in the 19th century the way to send a quick message to someone far away was, of course, the telegraph. The original French namers of the telegraph ("telegraphe" in French) took a lesson from the Greeks: Greek "tele-" means "distant," and "-graphe" traces to a Greek verb meaning "to write." Later, a message sent by telegraph was dubbed in English a "telegram" (from Greek "gramma," meaning "letter"). Telegrams were a great innovation, but they were expensive. You had to pay by the word, so folks created a kind of shorthand that let them keep their missives brief. By the late 1800s, "telegraphese" was being used for any language that was as terse as the clipped and cryptic style used in telegrams.

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