Expressed very concisely; summarized in the briefest possible way.
This phrase comes from an ancient story told by Pliny the Elder about Homer's 'Iliad' being written in such tiny script that it could fit inside a walnut shell. The story was likely apocryphal, but it captured the imagination as the ultimate example of compression. Shakespeare used the phrase in 'Hamlet' (1602), and it became common by the 1600s.
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