Laconic

Laconic (pronounced luh-kon-ik)

(1) Using few words; expressing much in few words.

(2) A reply or phrase of this character.

1580–1590: From the Latin Lacōnicus (Spartan) from the Ancient Greek Λακωνικός (Lakōnikós) (Laconian) from Lakōn (a Laconian).  Laconia was the region inhabited and ruled by the Spartans, noted for their economical use of language.  The alternative spelling laconick is long obsolete.  Because of the long history, there's no exact synonym but words in a similar vein include terse, brusque, pithy, brief, compact, compendious, concise, crisp, curt, sententious, short and sweet, succinct, breviloquent & brevity.  Laconic & laconical are adjectives, laconism is a noun and laconically is an adverb; the noun plural is laconisms.

Taking Hemlock with Socrates, gracefully

In Antiquity, Laconia was the region inhabited and ruled by the Spartans, known for their brevity in speech and in English, the meaning "concise, abrupt" emerged in the 1580s (although laconical was created and went extinct a decade earlier).  The origin of this sense was when Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BC; king (basileus) of Macedonia 359-336) threatened the Spartans with the words: "If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground." to which the Spartans' replied: "If."  Although allied when faced with the threat of Persian invasion, Athens and Sparta had a long tradition of enmity, realized most famously in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC).  Their differences were cultural as well as political for while the Spartans were known for their dry, understated wit (which we now call "laconic humor"), the Athenians more readily displayed their "Attic wit" (the Attic peninsula the region encompassing the city of Athens), something refined, poignant and delicate, though often not brief.

Death of Socrates (1787), oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In Ancient Greece, it was in Athens that art, education and literature was most valued, virtues never forgotten by modern historians, many of whom contrast the earthier Spartans unfavorably although, at the time, perhaps not all Athenians shared the view.  Socrates (circa 470–399 BC), in Plato's (circa 427-348 BC) dialogue Protagoras, detected some cleverness in the Spartans' economy of language which hid their wisdom, revealing sometimes with a brief remark a sophistication of thought and understanding.  Scholars tend however to take this with a grain of Attic salt, noting Socrates’ fondness for a little gentle irony.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

The Laconia Order

The Laconia-Befehl (Laconia Order) was one of the more controversial documents submitted by the prosecution to the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which in 1945-1946 presided over the trial of the leading Nazis.  The order was issued in 1942 by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; head of the German Navy 1943-1945, German head of state 1945) which he was commanding officer of the Kriegsmarine's (the German Navy) Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU) (U-boat or submarine) fleet and was pursuant to what became known as the Laconia Incident.  RMS Laconia was a Cunard ocean liner which the British Admiralty had converted to an armed merchant cruiser, making her a legitimate military target.  On 12 September 1942, she was sunk in a U-Boat attack and in the aftermath, while several U-Boats were rescuing survivors with the intention of transferring them to other vessels, they were attacked by US bombers, despite having informed Allied forces by radio that both the Allied soldiers and women and children had been rescued and were sheltering on the decks of the submarines.

In response, the Germans abandoned the rescue operation and cast the survivors adrift.  The new policy was formalized on 17 September when the Laconia Order was signalled to the fleet, dictating, inter alia, henceforth no rescue attempts of survivors were to be attempted unless it was to secure prisoners of military value (captains or ships' engineers) and then only if there was no risk to the U-Boat.  The British prosecution team introduced the order as evidence of a war crime ordered by Dönitz which effectively amounted to ordering the murder of shipwrecked survivors and treated it as the beginning of "unrestricted submarine warfare".  However, the British seem genuinely to have been unaware of the circumstances which led to the issuing of the order and the Americans certainly didn't wish to discuss the conduct of their air-crews, some of whom had been awarded medals for the attack, even though their claim to have sunk the U-Boat were erroneous (though understandable, a crash dive and a sinking visually similar when viewed from the air.  The IMT noted the ambiguity in the order but in the circumstances granted Dönitz the benefit of the doubt and they were further swayed by the affidavit of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz (1885–1966) who commanded US forces in the Pacific.  Nimitz's submission, supported by others was that the US had conducted unrestricted submarine warfare from the point of the nation's entry into the conflict in December 1941 and that such a policy was wholly lawful under the rules of war at sea.

Defendants in the dock at Nuremberg, Dönitz (in sun glasses), sitting in the back row.

Thus the partial success of Dönitz's sophisticated variation of a tu quoque defense, an attempt by an accused to deny the legitimacy of a charge by alleging those mounting the prosecution committed exactly the same offence and thus stand equally guilty.  The IMT had explicitly banned the use of tu quoque but allowed the argument in this one case because it hung on the notion that unrestricted submarine warfare was, as practiced by both sides, entirely lawful and within the rules of war at sea.  A great many British & US sea captains and admirals agreed (“admirals are a trade union” Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957) would later remark in another context).  The judges must have been impressed but the eventual judgement was certainly murky.  Although convicted on counts two (crimes against peace) and three (war crimes), he received only a ten-year sentence, the shortest term of the seven imposed on those not hanged or acquitted.  Perhaps tellingly, one has to read the summary of the verdicts to work out against which of the indictment's four counts he had been convicted; it really isn't possible to work it out from the judgment and it wasn't until later it emerged it had been written by one of the judges who had voted for his acquittal.