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ces, axioms, and maxims; full of meaning; terse and energetic in expression; pithy; as, a sententious style or discourse; sententious truth. How he apes his sire, Ambitiously sententious! Addison.

A short, pithy, and instructive saying; a terse remark, conveying some important truth; a sententious precept or maxim.

Pertaining to, or in the manner of, an apotghem; sententious; pithy.

To utter apothegms, or short and sententious sayings.

ee things be required in the oration of a man having authority -- that it be compendious, sententious, and delectable. Sir T. Elyot.

To utter smartly and sententiously; as, to crack a joke. B. Jonson.

Sententious; uttering or containing maxims, or striking detached thoughts; aphoristic. A city long famous as the seat of elegiac and gnomic poetry. G. R. Lewes. Gnomic Poets, Greek poets, as Theognis and Solon, of the sixth century B. C., whose writings consist of short sententious precepts and reflections.…

In a gnomic, didactic, or sententious manner.

Lapidary style, that style which is proper for monumental and other inscriptions; terse; sententious.

or state of being pretty; -- used sometimes in a disparaging sense. A style . . . without sententious pretension or antithetical prettiness. Jeffrey.

or scurrilous; mean, vile, or obscene jocularity. Your reasons . . . have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility. Shak.

The quality or state of being sententious. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne.

The quality or state of being set; formality; obstinacy. "The starched setness of a sententious writer." R. Masters.

o literary standing. It employs a classical or academic diction, and a more condensed and sententious style than Mandarin, and differs also in the doubling and arrangement of words.