Lapidary vs Pithy - What's the difference?
lapidary | pithy |
A person who cuts, polishes, engraves, or deals in gems.
:2005 Peter G. Read, "Gemmology"
:*in the very early days of gemstone fashioning, a polisher or lapidary would cut and polish both diamonds and other gemstones.
An expert in gems or precious stones; a connoisseur of lapidary work.
(archaic) A treatise on precious stones.
Pertaining to gems and precious stones, or the art of working them.
Suitable for inscriptions; efficient, stately, concise; embodying the refinement and precision characteristic of stone-cutting.
:* 2000': The sole truth was that supplied by mathematics or by such '''lapidary propositions as “What's done cannot be undone,” which was irrefutably correct. — Karen Armstrong, ''The Battle for God (Harper 2004, p. 71)
Concise and meaningful.
* 1825 , ,
* 1873 April 25, (editor), ''The Chemical News ,
* 1876 , ,
Of, like, or abounding in pith.
* 1863 , ,
* 1910 , , Suggestions and Reminders I: For the North, April,
* 1911 , ,
As adjectives the difference between lapidary and pithy
is that lapidary is pertaining to gems and precious stones, or the art of working them while pithy is concise and meaningful.As a noun lapidary
is a person who cuts, polishes, engraves, or deals in gems.lapidary
English
(wikipedia lapidary)Noun
(lapidaries)Derived terms
* lapidary's lathe * lapidary's mill * lapidary's wheelAdjective
(en adjective)pithy
English
Adjective
(er)- Mr. Lamb, on the contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers.
- The following passage, which is exquisitely pithy and exquisitely modest, winds up the description:- "In this apparatus there is nothing new but its simplicity and thorough trustworthiness."
- IT was a pithy' saying that of Lorenzo de' Medici, and true as ' pithy , that we are enjoined to forgive our enemies, but nowhere are we told that we should forgive our friends.
- Must we know the torrid zone only through travelled bananas, plucked too soon and pithy ? or by bottled anacondas? or by the tarry-flavored slang of forecastle-bred paroquets?
- Parsnip .—Dig the roots before they grow and become soft and pithy .
- To summarize the characters of a true mushroom - it grows only in pastures; it is of small size, dry, and with unchangeable flesh; the cap has a frill; the gills are free from the stem, the spores brown-black or deep purple-black in colour, and the stem solid or slightly pithy .