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 compendere, meaning "to weigh together".
Examples
An example of a compendium might be the Oxford English Dictionary project which attempts to be a comprehensive compilation of words in the English language. Other sites on the Internet also have directories that could make some claim to this; Google's directory, about.com, etc.
Another example is 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
References
- ^ Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (USCCB 2005), 200 pages, English hardcover ISBN 1574557254.
External links
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