laconization

English

Etymology

laconize +‎ -ation

Noun

laconization (uncountable)

1. (rare) The practice, or an instance, of making something more Spartan in character.
   • 2011, W. Lindsay Wheeler, Macrocosm/Microcosm in Doric Thought:

     The phrase, “The rule of one is best”, is a laconization of this verse in Homer "there is no good in having many rulers; let only one ruler be, one king".

   • 2000, Nigel M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta, The University of North Carolina Press, (unpaginated)

     The strange appearance of these words, and others like them, is due to a combination of laconization and a tendency in koinē to omit the omicron in the final syllables of words ending in -ιος (ios) or -ιος^[sic] (ion).

   • 1985, Jeremiah Reedy, Apophoreta: Latin & Greek Studies in Honor of Grace L. Beede, Bolchazy Carducci Publications - Literary Collections, page 131

     Inadvertently, however, oligarchs had overlooked the one major flaw in their laconization policy which the radicals seized upon to whip them into tacit agreement on imperialism. To be specific, laconization in foreign affairs.

   • 2012, Kurt A. Raaflaub, Hans van Wees, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World - A Companion to Archaic Greece, Wiley-Blackwell, (unpaginated)

     If we compare this situation with the Dark Age, it seems appropriate to speak of a thorough cultural Laconization of Messenia.

   • 1998, Robert J. Buck, Historia: Thrasybulus and the Athenian Democracy: The Life of an Athenian Statesman - Einzelschriften - Issue 120, Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, page 63

     Krentz makes a strong case that the primary motive for this further purging was not so much greed and fear, as Xenophon and Aristotle suggest, but rather the suppression of overt political opposition coupled with an attempt at the Laconization of the state, that is, reconstructing Athens to copy as closely as possible the Spartan model.