BRACHYLOGY, (from βραχύς and λογία "expression"), in Rhetoric, the expressing any thing in the most concise manner. This, so far as consistent with perspicuity, is a virtue and beauty of style; but if obscurity be the consequence, which is often the case, it becomes a blemish and inexcusable defect.—Quintilian gives an instance of brachylogy from Sallust: Mithridates corpore ingenti perinde armatus; "Mithridates, as it were, armed with the hugeness of his stature."