He answered all their questions with monosyllables like “yes” and “no.”
Recent Examples on the WebBut where the two Stegosaurus brothers speak in Jurassic monosyllables, Stegothesaurus has the gift of a bountiful vocabulary. Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 22 June 2018 The result is an idiom of great spareness and simplicity:The words are short, mostly monosyllables. Gregory Hays, New York Times, 5 Dec. 2017 Original writer Derek Kolstad and director Chad Stahelski have returned for the sequel, alongside the taciturn Reeves, who brews up more of his Wickian magic while speaking infrequently and mostly in monosyllables. Katie Walsh, The Mercury News, 9 Feb. 2017 Still on the ground, Huete answers with monosyllables before using a cell phone to call his sister, who arrived at the scene soon after … James Hohmann, Washington Post, 26 May 2017 The title of Frantz is something else again, neither a piece of hand-holding nor an act of mild subversion, but a monosyllable with a gift for multitasking—and an index of the impacted richness that the film displays for roughly an hour. Leo Robson, Newsweek, 4 May 2017
Word History
Etymology
modification of Middle French or Late Latin; Middle French monosyllabe, from Late Latin monosyllabon, from Greek, from neuter of monosyllabos having one syllable, from mon- + syllabē syllable