Words & WritingGreek → English
Synopsis
/sɪˈnɑːpsɪs/noun
A short account that lets you take in a whole book, film or argument at once.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
together, with
ὄψις
ópsis
sight, view
Literally: “a seeing together”
The story of the word
The idea is spatial before it is literary: everything laid out where one look can cover it. That is exactly why Matthew, Mark and Luke are the Synoptic Gospels. Eighteenth-century German scholars printed the three in parallel columns so the overlaps and gaps could be seen side by side, and the name stuck to the gospels themselves. English has the word from the 1610s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1610s
Same family
opticautopsysynopticbiopsy
In a sentence
The producer read the one-page synopsis and nothing else.
Give me a synopsis before the meeting, not the full report.