Laconic: A Short, Pithy Trend

Marked by the Use of Few Words

I know that Michael Jackson died and that the Chevy Volt is expected to retail for around $40,000. I’ve heard of Twitter and I understand that Hillary Clinton had an emotional outburst in a foreign country.

Except for random news like this that I assimilate by accident, I don’t know anything about important events and trends. Sometimes when I need a break from my online search for fast cash from a cheap payday loan, I attempt to bring myself into cultural conformity by glancing at Google Trends, but I never have a clue what I’m looking at.

Effectively concise and to the point

Today, however, at number 67, wedged between cunagin sypher and starwood property trust was laconic, a word I recognized. How did a word like laconic make it to the Google Hot Trends list? With so many colorful search-terms to choose from — more to love episode 3, mutant parakeet, driven media, myfreecar, and erector spykee the spy robot, to name just a few – why would so many people, relative to total search volume, type something so pedestrian as laconic into their Google search bars?

Very brief in statement or expression

So I put my search for unsecured loans on the back burner, and clicked on laconic. Sure enough I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I resumed my search for the cheapest personal loan, but I couldn’t stay away from laconic. I came back to Google Trends just a minute later, and to my horror, laconic had already slipped to number 88 on the list, just after us mexico soccer and before mark boresow. I clicked on laconic again and began to study in earnest.

Tending not to speak frequently

The first thing I learned is that some Elvis reincarnation named Robert Pattinson delivered a “pretty laconic speech” at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards when he said “that to him Twilight fans ‘are the hottest hotties and the hottest teens.’” So I learned that when you haven’t had much practice speaking, one way to be laconic is to use a single free morpheme like hot as many times as you can in one short sentence.

Precise expression with an economy of words

The next thing I learned is that Jimmy Bedford died and that he was a lean, laconic Tennessean whose job it was to make sure Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee Whiskey tasted just the way it had since 1866. For 20 years as master distiller he sipped whiskey without swallowing, and he once said, “People tell me I have more will power than anyone they’ve ever known.” From Jimmy Bedford’s story, I learned that without wasted words, 9.5 million cases of whiskey can be dispatched to 135 countries every year.

Terse and to the point

The next entry was more difficult to decipher. As near as I could tell, a horror punk group called Offcuts released a recording “that sounds at the same time laconic and mightily ?!*#ed off but they do it no favours in burying it with distorted screams.” From this, I learned that not everyone who uses a sesquipedalian term like laconic knows how to look it up.

Brevity of speech

Then I learned something important about TV-watching. Starting next March, there will be a new show called Lawman and it will be marked by Timothy Olyphant’s “easy drawl” and “laconic, very Elmore Leonardesque dialogue.” This wasn’t in the article, but I happen to know that Elmore Leonard is the author and screenwriter who said, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Thanks to Google Trends, I now also know that when the dialogue is short and terse and easy to understand, a new TV show can be a real “humdinger.”

Short, brief, and pithy

The next entry was a blog site called “Laconic Reply” from which I learned that even if you have your very own blog site and you put laconic in the name of it, you might still need 588 words to express your opinion that gender stereotypes are bad things. All because you didn’t look up laconic before you started blogging on your very own site.

Concise to the point of seeming rude, uninterested, or mysterious

I learned all this just today on Google Trends. But already I’m behind the times again, because laconic has now slipped off the Hot Trends list and neither jj hardy, marisa elise, porcini louisville, nor any of the other 97 entries means anything to me. So I’m going to concentrate on getting some quick cash now, because as luck would have it, it’s easier to fill out a personal loan application than it is to keep up with all these crazy trends.