It's worth noting that a big part of the Common Lisp spiel was that it was suitable for very large applications which needed to be maintained for a long time.

It's worth noting that a big part of the Common Lisp spiel was that it was suitable for very large applications which needed to be maintained for a long time. So the two (terseness and large-scale development) need not be mutually exclusive. (On the line of your point, though, maybe it's a shame that relatively-verbose languages like Ada and Modula-3 became social pariahs because their virtues are hard to demonstrate in the small.)