In the sentence, 'The veteran sergeant's TERSE reply left no room for further questions,' the word TERSE most nearly means:

Context clues in the sentence — a reply that 'left no room for further questions' — signal that TERSE means short, brief, and to the point, often abruptly so. The opposite would be long-winded or wordy, offered as a distractor. When a Word Knowledge item embeds the word in a sentence, use the surrounding meaning to infer the definition: a reply that ends discussion is concise and clipped. TERSE describes speech or writing that is economical with words, sometimes to the point of seeming curt.