The Collaborative International Dictionary
Compendious \Com*pen"di*ous\, a. [L. compendiosus.] Containing the substance or general principles of a subject or work in a narrow compass; abridged; summarized.
More compendious and expeditious ways.
--Woodward.
Three things be required in the oration of a man having
authority -- that it be compendious, sententious, and
delectable.
--Sir T.
Elyot.
Syn: Short; summary; abridged; condensed; comprehensive; succinct; brief; concise.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"concise," late 14c., from Old French compendieux, from Latin compendiosus "advantageous, abridged, brief," from compendium (see compendium).
Wiktionary
a. 1 containing a subset of words, succinctly described; abridged and summarized 2 briefly describing a body of knowledge
WordNet
Usage examples of "compendious".
We find in it not only indications or explicit enouncement of the author’s own views upon almost every important topic which occupied his thoughts, but also a compendious exhibition of the ideas which most powerfully influenced the life at that age.
What reason, then, is there for our consuming time in those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or vidual continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have so much more simple and compendious a method of deliverance from sin, by persuading those who are fresh from baptism to put an end to their lives, and so pass to their Lord pure and well-conditioned?
To concede this is to make a compendious confession that the gods are useless, and their worship superfluous.
But if they worship all the stars because they are part of Jove whom they worship, by the same compendious method they could supplicate them all in him alone.
These correspondences have been elaborately mapped in the Book 777 in a very convenient and compendious form.
Now a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the summer's growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce.
I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra.
But I really long for a decent old-fashioned Christmas card, with the Virgin and Child on it, and Santa Claus and his reindeer, and a robin with a twig of holly in its beak, and some mica clinging to it to simulate snow, and a really compendious and warm-hearted greeting in the manner of G.