Pithy is a word I frequently encounter while reading. It’s an adjective that means concise and forcefully expressed, unless you’re talking about a piece of fruit, in which case it means the fruit has a lot of pith, which is the soft, white spongy stuff inside the peel. Pith is especially abundant in grapefruits.
But in this case pithy means concise and forcefully expressed. I most recently came across pithy while reading a book on how to read Montaigne, imaginatively titled How to Read Montaigne by Terrence Cave. The word appeared in the following sentence: “And above all, in a remarkably pithy sentence that occurs a little later, he asserts his rights of ownership of everything that he says, regardless of where it comes from …”
It’s a good word.
Monte