Summary

How to spell summary

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce summary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does summary mean?

1. nounA brief statement that gives the main points of something longer.
2. adjectiveDone quickly and without attention to the usual formalities or detail.

Summary in a sentence

• noun

  The report opens with a one-page summary of the findings.

• adjective

  The employee faced summary dismissal after the security breach.

• noun

  She emailed a short summary of the meeting to everyone who missed it.

• adjective

  The judge granted a summary judgment without a full trial.

Where does summary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin summarium, meaning 'an abridgement' or 'an epitome', which was built on summa, the noun for a 'total' or 'whole amount'. The Romans used summa for the figure written at the top of a column of added numbers, since they counted upward and placed the result at the highest point; summus literally meant 'highest'. From the idea of the whole gathered into a single total came the sense of a piece of writing that condenses a longer work into its essentials. English took the word in during the 1400s, and the adjective sense, meaning 'done briefly and without ceremony', followed soon after. The same summa root lies behind 'sum', 'summit' and 'consummate', and the doubled m at the start, easy to forget, is the spelling trap that comes straight from that Latin ancestor.

How the word is built

• summ- (from summa: total, sum)
• -ary (forming a noun or adjective)