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I saw the sentence in a fraternity guestbook on the internet, but can't find what "tight" means. Specifically, when it describes a website or web page.

I looked in my dictionary, and found tight means rigid, hardly fixed, etc. But I think none of those are suitable for the sentence. Could someone tell me the meaning, please?

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    It's a rather unusual usage, but essentially tight - (6) concise; terse: a tight style of writing. Most likely what the writer/speaker actually means is the layout of the website is well-designed, coordinated (that's how we sometimes use it in contexts like a tight jazz band). But because it's not really a "standard" usage, it's really a matter of opinion exactly what he meant. Sep 19, 2016 at 15:04
  • If possible, please provide more details, like where you found this sentence or a larger portion of the text. This will help users determine the meaning.
    – Em.
    Sep 19, 2016 at 15:05
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    You absolutely need to provide a link to the example you saw, or provide more context. Tight, even as slang, can have many possible meanings, among which is 'Stylish, cool, having everything together' (source: The Urban Dictionary.) Caution this dictionary is great for slang or fairly new uses but it includes a lot of vulgarity. Sep 19, 2016 at 15:07
  • Based on the link, it might seem that the writer is using "tight" to refer to a close knit group of like minded people, in this case fraternity brothers from various locations. It does not seem to refer to the technical construction of the website. The quote is: "Just wanted to say that is a tight web site frat keep it up", and the writer is showing encouragement for participation.
    – Peter
    Sep 20, 2016 at 1:51

1 Answer 1

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As a couple of commenters noted, "tight" does not have a clearly defined, widely recognized meaning in this context.

That said, as a software developer, we use the word "tight" to refer to a software product that accomplishes the job with the least amount of code. That is "efficiently designed" in a sense comparable to saying that a mechanical device accomplishes its purpose with a minimum number of parts.

So for a website, if, for example, it had one screen to both enter new customers and to update information about existing customers, instead of having a "new customer" screen and an "update customer" screen, that would contribute to calling it "tight". Or if the same graphics and banners were used consistently throughout the site. Etc. If the whole design of the website was like this, if it did the job with 10 screens when others would use 30 and with 20 icons where others would use 40, we'd call it a "tight website".

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