Compendium

How to spell compendium

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce compendium

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does compendium mean?

1. nounA concise but comprehensive collection of information on a subject, usually gathered into a single book or document.

Compendium in a sentence

• The publisher released a compendium of household repair tips for new homeowners.

• Her bookshelf held a thick compendium of garden plants arranged by season.

Where does compendium come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes directly from the Latin compendium, which literally meant 'a weighing together' and so 'a saving' or 'a shortcut'. It was built from the prefix com- meaning 'together' and the verb pendere meaning 'to weigh', the same root that gives us 'pendant', 'pension', and 'suspend'. To Roman ears a compendium was the profit or saving made by taking a direct route rather than a roundabout one, in other words a way of cutting things short. By the time English adopted it in the early seventeenth century, that idea of condensing had shifted to learning: a compendium became a concise summary that gathers a large subject into a small, handy space. The spelling keeps the Latin -ium ending and the silent inner logic of 'pend' (weigh), which is worth remembering since the tricky part for writers is the unstressed -dium tail rather than the front of the word.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• pend (weigh)
• -ium (noun-forming suffix)