preoccupation, parody, understated, aconic understatement, sinewy, understated design/understated dialogue

Saiko-Zenji temple is on a hillside in northern Hiroshima Prefecture. It was built in 1469 and has a more understated design than some of the more famous temples of the era.

The Chinese called Muslims, Jews and Christians in ancient times by the same name, "Hui Hui". Christians were called "Hui who abstain from animals without the cloven foot", Muslims were called "Hui who abstain from pork", Jews were called "Hui who extract the sinews". Hui zi or Hui Hui is presently used almost exclusively for Muslims, but Jews were still called Lan mao Hui zi which means "Blue cap Hui zi".

July 3, 1961

OBITUARY
Hemingway's Prize-Winning Works Reflected Preoccupation With Life and Death

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ernest Hemingway achieved world-wide fame and influence as a writer by a combination of great emotional power and a highly individual style that could be parodied but never successfully imitated.
His lean and sinewy prose; his mastery of a kind of laconic, understated dialogue; his insistent use of repetition, often of a single word, or name--built up and transmitted an inner excitement to thousands of his readers. In his best work, the effect was accumulative; it was as if the creative voltage increased as the pages turned.

preoccupy 
verb [T]
to be the main thought in someone's mind, causing other things to be forgotten:
Economic concerns are preoccupying the voters in this election.

preoccupied
adjective
thinking or worrying about something too much:
She's been very preoccupied recently because her mother has been very ill.
Why is the media so preoccupied with the love lives of politicians?

preoccupation [C or U]
My main preoccupation now is trying to keep life normal for the sake of my two boys.
Lately, his preoccupation with football had caused his marks at school to slip.


parody
noun
1 [C or U] writing, music, art, speech, etc. which intentionally copies the style of someone famous or copies a particular situation, making the features or qualities of the original more noticeable in a way that is humorous:
He was an eighteenth-century author who wrote parodies of other people's works.
There is a hint of self-parody in his later paintings.
Compare travesty.

2 [C] DISAPPROVING something which so obviously fails to achieve the effect that was intended that it is ridiculous:
"It was a parody of a trial, " said one observer.

parodist 
noun [C]
a person who writes parodies

parody 
verb [T]
to copy the style of someone or something in a humorous way:
One of the papers is running a competition in which you've got to parody a well-known author.



sinew
noun
1 [C] a tendon (= strong cord in the body connecting a muscle to a bone)

2 [C usually plural] a part of a structure or system that provides support and holds it together:
These steel posts form the sinews of the building.

sinewy
adjective
The fighter had a strong, sinewy body (= a body with strong muscles and little fat).

sin・ew

 

━━ n. 腱(けん); （pl.） 筋肉; 体力; （pl.） 原動力. （pl.） 資金.
the sinews of war　軍資金; 金.
━━ vt. 腱で結ぶ; 筋（力）［元気］をつける.
sin・ew・y
　━━ a. （肉など）筋の多い; 筋骨たくましい; （文体などが）引き締まった.

laconic adjective FORMAL
using very few words to express what you mean:
She had a laconic wit.
laconic

adj.
Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise. See synonyms at silent.

WORD HISTORY The study of the classics allows one to understand the history of the term laconic, which comes to us via Latin from Greek Lakonikos. The English word is first recorded in 1583 with the sense "of or relating to Laconia or its inhabitants." Lakonikos is derived from Lakon, "a Laconian, a person from Lacedaemon," the name for the region of Greece of which Sparta was the capital. The Spartans, noted for being warlike and disciplined, were also known for the brevity of their speech, and it is this quality that English writers still denote by the use of the adjective laconic, which is first found in this sense in 1589.
(© Houghton Mifflin Company)

understate 
verb [T]
to state or describe something in a way that makes it seem less important, serious, bad, etc. than it really is:
She believes the research understates the amount of discrimination women suffer.

understated
adjective
APPROVING He's very elegant, in an understated (= not too obvious) way.

understatement
noun [S or U]
To say that her resignation was a shock would be an understatement - it caused panic.
That New York City is not a peaceful place to live is the understatement of the year/month/century.