Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Containing or stating briefly all the essentials of something; comprehensive and concise.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Containing the substance or general principles of a subject in a narrow compass; short; abridged; concise: as, a compendious system of chemistry; a compendious grammar.
- Narrow; limited.
- Short; direct; not circuitous.
- Synonyms Succinct, Summary, etc. See
concise .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Containing the substance or general principles of a subject or work in a narrow compass; abridged; summarized.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective containing a
subset ofwords ,succinctly described;abridged andsummarized - adjective briefly describing a body of knowledge
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective briefly giving the gist of something
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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He got this tree up, shortened the stem, shaped the root, shod the point with some of his late old iron; and with this primitive tool, and a thick stake baked at the point, he opened the ground to receive twelve stout uprights, and he drove them with a tremendous mallet made upon what might be called the compendious or Hazelian method; it was a section of a hard tree with a thick shoot growing out of it, which shoot, being shortened, served for the handle.
Foul Play Charles Reade 1849
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Wendy Doniger's compendious account of religious traditions that constitute an "ism" only in the broadest possible sense begins with an account of being egg-pelted by one such hardliner who objected to her suggestion that some Sanskrit texts are interested in divine female sexuality.
The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger – review Priyamvada Gopal 2010
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He's also known for his compendious technical knowledge and his tactical sophistication and willingness to question orthodoxies, qualities he's demonstrated as an insightful newspaper columnist.
Can Fletcher Be a Leader of Champions? Richard Lord 2011
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These amounted to a compendious accounting for the possessions of most if not all squatters on the entire length of territory stretching east of Melbourne and from the Murray to Bass Strait, and all three parties to the Loughnan affair were listed, viz.No. 24.
Archive 2009-05-01 2009
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'Magnum Contact Sheets' Thames & Hudson, 508 pages, $150 , a compendious record of these deliberations spanning nine decades, attests to the decisions and revisions that produce definitive images.
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These amounted to a compendious accounting for the possessions of most if not all squatters on the entire length of territory stretching east of Melbourne and from the Murray to Bass Strait, and all three parties to the Loughnan affair were listed, viz.No. 24.
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If so, Mr. Romney self-administered the follow-up inoculation by throwing out that he probably pays, oh, 15% of his compendious income in taxes.
Behold the Taxpayer Behind the Tree Jr. Holman W. Jenkins 2012
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So began an on-again/off-again romance fully charted in this compendious collection of Marcus's occasional writings on his hero.
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The movie also sketches in the five-year-long, globe-girdling voyage during which he collected the compendious data for his book, along with much peripheral information about his health (wretched), his relationship with his devoutly religious wife (strained) and his apparently never-ending connection to his dead 10-year-old daughter (feverish).
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Children's Games is the title of the work, conjuring Pieter Bruegel's great painting of the same name, and there are traces here of the Flemish painter's compendious humour and spirit, just as there is something of Magritte in the queer scenarios of Alÿs's little paintings.
Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception; Ernesto Neto: The Edges of the World Laura Cummings 2010
hernesheir commented on the word compendious
Noah Webster's 1806 A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language is regarded as the first American dictionary of the English Language.
April 25, 2011