WordWealth: conspectus

con·spec·tus , n., pl. -tus·es.

1. a general or comprehensive view; survey. 2. a digest; summary; résumé.

[1830–40; < L: survey, view, act of seeing, equiv. to conspec-, var. s. of conspicere to see, catch sight of (con- CON- + -spicere, comb. form of specere to look) + -tus suffix of v. action]

—Syn. 2. compendium, brief, abstract, epitome.

(Random House Webster's Unabridged). Look at Thesaurus

The extent and intensity of this vast conflict amounting to undeclared civil war is such that it is difficult for any observer to form a conspectus or assess all its implications. ——4,000,000 People Cross the Punjab to Seek New Homes; The Guardian, Sept 25, 1947

Christopher Hill will be 90 in February and some of the essays in this famous volume, first published in 1958, were written 60 years ago.--Inevitably, therefore, one or two have a slightly dated feel, such as the introductory conspectus 'Recent Interpretations of the Civil War' which, as he concedes in a new preface, are no longer quite so recent.--In more important senses, however, these studies remain as vital, provocative and inspiring today as they were to their original readers. Indeed, in some ways, developments in the study of seventeenth-century English history since their first appearance make yet another reprinting eminently justifiable. —— Adam Fox; The Return of Revolution; Guardian; April 30 2001

With such a combination of elements, what might one not expect? It is not surprising to learn that Kipling contemplated, after his return to England, writing a colonial Comédie Humaine. 'Bit by bit, my original notion,' he writes, 'grew into a vast, vague conspectus—Army and Navy List, if you like—of the whole sweep and meaning of things and efforts and origins throughout the Empire.' Henry James, who wrote a preface to a collection of Kipling's early stories, said afterwards that he had thought at the time that it might perhaps be true that Kipling 'contained the seeds of an English Balzac.' —— Edmund Wilson; The Kipling That Nobody Read; Story covers what became of this English Balzac? Why did the author of the brilliant short stories never develop into an important novelist?; The Atlantic; Feb 1941

Yet a further scrutiny of the ''Histoire'' suggests a role altogether less limited for him, as one of those figures intended, through the sheer abundance of their promise and ambition, to embody the energy and brilliance of the period they flamboyantly inhabit. In a unique mixture of persuasive charm with a certain quality of ingenuousness that multiple experience could never quite breed out of him, Casanova's recollections somehow manage to persuade us that he was the 18th century, as much as Voltaire, Jefferson, Catherine the Great or Dr. Johnson could ever have claimed to be. We need his improvisatory dash and brio, his freewheeling virtuosity and ebullient optimism to round off our prospect of the Enlightenment, and any conspectus of the age that ignores him as a witness must inevitably seem maimed or foreshortened. —— Jonathan Keates; Jack-of-All-Trades, Master of One; The New York Times; Nov 23, 1997

Eagerly the Austen family went at their productions, choosing plays that represented, as Gay says, a conspectus of late 18th-century fashionable comic theatre. —— John Mullan, "Behind the scenes," The Guardian, August 31, 2002

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