Word of the Day

Sparta answered Philip's threat with one word

Plutarch's account of Philip II's threat and Sparta's one-word reply is the documented anecdote behind an adjective English borrowed nearly two millennia later.

2 min read2026-08-15

laconic adjective /lə-ˈkä-nik/

Using or involving the use of a minimum of words: concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious.¹

Sparta's reputation for terse speech

Laconic descends from the Latin laconicus, itself from the Greek Lakōnikos, “of Laconia,” a region of ancient Greece² in the Peloponnese whose capital was Sparta.¹ Merriam-Webster's entry for the adjective notes that the Spartans were “famous for their terseness of speech,” the reputation the adjective still carries.¹ That reputation had a specific test in 338 BC. Philip II of Macedon had just defeated the Greek city-states at Chaeronea, and that year he marched through the Peloponnese. Most cities fell in line as he approached. Sparta alone refused, so Philip turned his army toward Laconia itself.³

Philip's threat and Sparta's one-word answer

Plutarch preserves the exchange in an essay he titled “On Talkativeness,” where he holds it up as a model of Spartan brevity worth imitating. Philip's letter warned, “If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.” The Spartans wrote back a single word: “If.”⁴ A few chapters later in the same essay, Plutarch records the same style used flatly rather than wittily. Asked by letter whether Sparta would let him enter the city, Philip received a page with one word written large across it: “No.”⁵ The reply worked by handing Philip back his own conditional: he had written “if,” and “If” was the whole of the Spartans' answer.

Laconic reaches English nearly two millennia later

The adjective was not the first of its family to cross into English. The noun laconism is on record from 1570, in Peter Levens's writing. The adjective laconical follows in 1576, in Abraham Fleming's. Laconic itself is not attested until 1589, in the writing of King James VI and I, per the Oxford English Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's own entry corroborates that date independently.⁶ By the time the word settled, it no longer needed Sparta to make its point. It named the manner Sparta happened to have demonstrated, because Spartans, as one etymological reference puts it, “cultivated the skill of saying much in few words.”⁷

The manner outlived the place name

Merriam-Webster's own citation file, drawn from recent journalism and criticism, shows the word doing exactly that work. The file runs to thirty examples, pulled from outlets including The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone, published between 2017 and 2026.⁸ Writing in The New Yorker, Dexter Filkins drew the contrast directly: “The athletes are breezy and laconic, the sportswriters awe-struck and serious.”⁸ Nobody reads the athletes as rude for it. Laconic names a manner other words blur into curtness or shyness. Plutarch's record of the exchange with Philip gives that manner an actual sound, in the Spartans' own words.

Sparta's reputation for terse speech

Philip's threat and Sparta's one-word answer

Laconic reaches English nearly two millennia later

The manner outlived the place name

Sources