Merriam Webster iconMerriam WebsterSep 23, 2026 ~1 min source read

compendious

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 23, 2026 is: compendious • \kum-PEN-dee-us\ • adjective A compendious book, research paper, article, etc. is one that provides most or all of the information one may want or require.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 23, 2026 is: compendious • \kum-PEN-dee-us\ • adjective A compendious book, research paper, article, etc.

is one that provides most or all of the information one may want or require.

Similarly, a person might be said to have compendious knowledge of a subject if they have a full and wide-ranging—that is, comprehensive—grasp of it.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 23, 2026 is: compendious • \kum-PEN-dee-us\ • adjective A compendious book, research paper, article, etc. is one that provides most or all of the information one may want or require. Similarly, a person might be said to have compendious knowledge of a subject if they have a full and wide-ranging—that is, comprehensive—grasp of it.

How it works

  • Compendious can also describe something that is both comprehensive and concise, as in "a compendious summary." // The coveted book prize was awarded to a compendious history of environmental literature in...
  • When Noah Webster titled his first dictionary, published in 1806, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, he used compendious to mean "short, brief, concise, summary," as he defined it on the...
  • This may come as a surprise given that compendious is now most often used to mean " comprehensive " and is applied to books, papers, etc.
  • Webster's Compendious Dictionary was no more than a preparation for his two-volume An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), and compendious traces bac...

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