compendium

Forms

compendium n (genitive compendiī or compendī); second declension^[1] It is also spelled conpendium.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from con- (“together”), pendō (“to weigh”) and -ium, literally “what is weighed together”;^[2][1][3] the TLL compares dispendium (“expense”).^[4] Lewis & Short say it first belonged to the language of household economy.^[3] De Vaan lists it among the derivatives of pendō, which he traces to Proto-Italic *pend-e/o- (“to hang, weigh”); most handbooks take the root as a variant of Proto-Indo-European *(s)penh₁- (“to spin, weave”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first, in the Bacchides, ironically of a gain hardly to be wished for at someone's age: the impudence he has acquired.^[2][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Its first senses are gain and saving: Plautus' characters tell each other to “put it down to saving”, and Pliny the Elder writes that careful thrift found ways of saving.^[2] From saving time and effort it came to mean a shorter way, a short cut, as when Pliny says that a merchant found a short cut, and Manilius that heaven does not love short cuts.^[2] In the legal and grammatical writers it is an abridgement or a shortened way of writing, as in Ulpian and Terentianus Maurus.^[2] In Medieval Latin it also meant property, a piece of furniture, a tenure of land by a precarial contract, and a prebend.^[7] As a place name, Compendium is Compiègne in northern France, a villa of the Suessiones in Gregory of Tours.^[1][4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of gain and saving.^[2][6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of saving and of a merchant's short cut.^[2][6]
• before 223 AD – Ulpian of an abridgement.^[2][6]
• 1580s – English compendium is borrowed from a medieval use of it.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. Gain, profit; compendī facere, to gain.^[2][3][1]
2. A saving; compendī facere, to save; ponere ad compendium, to count as saved.^[2][1]
3. A shorter route, a shortcut; figuratively, an easy method.^[2]
4. An abridgement; a concise way of writing, abbreviation; in the plural, shorthand.^[2][1]
5. A compendious device.^[2]
6. (Medieval Latin) Property; a piece of furniture.^[7]
7. (Medieval Latin) A tenure of land held by a precarial contract; a prebend.^[7]

Word family

• compendiārius
• compendio
• compendiōsus

Related words

• pendō
• dispendium
• compendō
• English compendium

Usage notes

Döderlein distinguishes the words for gain: lucrum is gain earned by oneself, ēmolumentum gain that comes without effort, quaestus the steady earnings of an occupation, and compendium a single, considerable gain in trade, the opposite of dispendium.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b c Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
8. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper