What does "telegraphese" mean?

The terse, abbreviated writing style used in or as used in telegraph messages; speech that resembles this.

Telegraphese

Q: What is a synonym for "telegraphese"?

Common synonyms include: federalese, journalese, officialese, pentagonese, shoptalk, washingtonese.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The terse, abbreviated writing style used in or as used in telegraph messages; speech that resembles this. uncountable
"Vythilingam said: "Injection every day. Perhaps all right then." Anstruther had not been long in Malaya. He attributed this wog's clipped telegraphese to the shyness of one who meets socially a racial superior."
2
language characterized by terseness and ellipsis as in telegrams wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

federalese journalese officialese pentagonese shoptalk washingtonese

Example

More examples

"Vythilingam said: "Injection every day. Perhaps all right then." Anstruther had not been long in Malaya. He attributed this wog's clipped telegraphese to the shyness of one who meets socially a racial superior."

Etymology

From telegraph + -ese.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.