compendium

compendium, syllabus, digest, pandect, survey, sketch, précis, aperçu are comparable when they mean a treatment of a subject or of a topic in brief compass. A compendium gathers in brief, orderly, and intelligible form, sometimes outlined, the facts, principles, or details essential to a general understanding of some matter; the word typically implies compilation rather than original investigation

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A Treatise on Epidemic Cholera which contained little original matter but was published as a compendium of the existing knowledge of this disease— Steiner

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A syllabus, often presented with a series of headings, points, or propositions, gives concise statements affording a view of the whole and an indication of its significance

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no party program, no official syllabus of opinions, which we all have to defend— Inge

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A digest presents a body of information gathered from many sources and arranged and classified for ready accessibility, often alphabetized and indexed; the word also indicates a condensed easy-to-read version

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the only hope of gaining such knowledge lies in a summarization and thorough digest of the huge body of county statistics already available— Bogue

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the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, now in its fifth year of uninterrupted weekly appearance, a seventy-thousand word a week digest of forty Russian newspapers and periodicals— Mortimer Graves

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A pandect is a systematic digest covering the whole of a monumental subject

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no printed body of modern social history, either by purpose or accident, contains a richer pandect of the efficient impulses of its age— Morley

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A survey is a brief comprehensive presentation giving main outlines, often as a preliminary aid to thorough study or more detailed treatment

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the policy of the Board and its founder being to make first of all a . . . survey of the educational needs of the country— J. D. Greene

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an essay on the Renaissance, not a history of the Renaissance. It omits mention of many interesting details of that vast transformation in an effort to determine, through a broad survey of its more salient features, the fundamental nature of the movement— Sellery

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A sketch is a slight tentative preliminary presentation subject to later change, emendation, and amplification

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to give anything but the most fragmentary sketch of the winter of '94 and '95 in Berlin is impossible— Fairchild

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The American Chancery Digest[/i], including state and federal equity decisions, with an introductory sketch of equity courts and their jurisdiction— Wilkinson

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A précis is a concise clear-cut statement or restatement of main matters, often in the form of a report or a summary that suggests the style or tone of an original

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a carefully prepared critical text of Guido, with a short critical introduction, a full critical apparatus, and English précis printed concurrently— Times Lit. Sup.

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An aperçu is a sketch giving a very brief and sometimes impressionistic compression of the whole, with all details omitted

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popular books which give an aperçu of recent research, in order to have some idea of the general scientific purpose served by particular facts and laws— Russell

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Analogous words: conspectus, epitome, brief, abstract (see ABRIDG-MENT)