Compendium

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A compendium is a concise, yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge. A compendium may summarize a larger work. In most cases the body of knowledge will concern some delimited field of human interest or endeavour (for example, hydrogeology, logology, ichthyology, phytosociology, or myrmecology), while a "universal" encyclopedia can be referred to as a compendium of all human knowledge.

The word compendium comes from the Latin word "compenso", meaning "to weigh together or balance".

[edit] Examples

An example would be the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a 598-question-and-answer concise book which summarises the same set of Catholic Faith and Morals.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Look up compendium in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• The Oxford English Dictionary site