Summaries

How to spell summaries

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce summaries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does summaries mean?

1. nounBrief statements that give the main points of something longer, such as documents, reports, or events.

Summaries in a sentence

• The analyst attached short summaries of each quarterly report to the email.

• Weekly meeting summaries help staff who missed the discussion catch up quickly.

Where does summaries come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'summary', which descends from the Latin summarius, meaning 'concerning the sum or the whole', built on summa, 'the total' or 'the highest amount'. The Romans wrote sums at the top of a column rather than the bottom, so summa literally carried the idea of the topmost figure, the 'highest', from summus, 'highest'. By the late 1400s English had taken the word to mean a condensed account that captured the gist or total substance of a longer text. The very same summa root still powers everyday relatives such as 'sum', 'summit', and 'consummate', all turning on the notion of a peak or total. The spelling trap lives in the doubled m carried over from summa and in the plural, where the final y of 'summary' politely becomes ie before the s.

How the word is built

• summ- (from Latin summa: the highest total, the sum)
• -ary (noun suffix)
• -es (plural, with y changing to ie)