Abstract Précis
Learned Vol. 8, Issue 1
Academia’s in a bit of a spot right now: Nobody trusts anybody, funding is gone, and the robots are taking over. In other words, it’s the perfect time to take a look at what academia is, what it means, and why it’s still a necessary thing in the world of 2025. And, because this is Learned, we’re going to do it by looking at the words of Academia - abstracts, curricula, and grants, oh my! Welcome to Learned, Volume 8: Academia ex-Intelligentia. Let’s get started.
Every academic paper begins with a summary of what, exactly, is in the paper. This is just sound first principles. I mean, remember what your English composition teacher taught you all those years ago? Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you just told them1. The issue is, of course, that academics can’t actually just ask you for a summary. They have to couch it in fancy words like abstract or précis.
Then when you ask them what the difference is between abstract and precis, they hem and haw and glance at the ground and then make up a meeting they just have to get to. Ask me how I know. Luckily though, you have me and I’ve done the boring hard work of figuring out why we academics are using two inherently odd words instead of the perfectly good one everyone understands.
Just to be clear, the one everyone understands is summary. We do understand summary, right? Let’s check in with our very own Old Faithful, the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
an abstract, abridgment, or compendium especially of a preceding discourse
Wait a minute, I see one of our fancy-schmancy big words sneaking in there! But we’ll get to that. Summary, as a noun, traces back to the Latin word for total. From there, it evolved very quickly into meaning a compacted form of the whole, which is more-or-less where it stayed, minus the odd deviation into legal jargon.
Now, as I noted, our definition of summary actually has one of our key synonyms, abstract. Let’s get ol’ M-W’s take on that and on precis while we’re at it:
a summary of points (as of a writing) usually presented in skeletal form
Ooh, now we get the reverse! Alright, let’s see précis:
a concise summary of essential points, statements, or facts
Well, that was supremely un-illuminating. Let’s see if we can’t remedy that. This one-sheet from the Johnson County Community College highlights the difference well (I’ve bolded some key phrases):
An Abstract is a short…self-contained summary of a longer work
while
a Précis is a shortening or summary of the text of a longer written work…sometimes including rhetorical analysis or argument.
That seems to tell the true difference between the two words: an abstract is just the facts ma’am2 while a précis can have new commentary that gives important context to the work that follows.
The good people at the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange generally concur. Although their discussion is centered more around summary and synopsis, a couple of users cite a few references and include both abstract and précis amongst other, related terms. One of the cited sources has a good note about précis that I thought was worth including in this discussion3: User Mark Worthen cites Professor David Barnhill’s argument that:
A precis is a brief summary of a larger work. The term "abstract" has the same meaning and is much more common, but I prefer the term precis because of its relation to the word "precise," and because of the way the word is pronounced: "pray-see." A precis is a precise condensation of the basic thesis and major points of a paper; it tells the reader the gist of what has been said.
Which is an excellent definition. It does bring up an interesting question though, where exactly do these words come from? Etymonline to the rescue! The site traces précis back to PIE4 roots through Latin to 14th century French and from there to English as both précis and precise.
But what about abstract? When we looked at the dictionary entry above, we politely stepped over the myriad of adjective senses to focus only on the noun sense. It does beg the question though, how did we get from this:
having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content
to, well, summary?
The answer is, as always, time and distance. Abstract comes from the Latin abstractus, where it meant pulling away, or breaking apart from. From there it begins to acquire the nuance that it is not something tangible, but rather something that exists only as an idea pulled away from the physical reality of the world. A couple of centuries later, that abstract idea has evolved to represent the essence of something, the core of a larger idea. And that gives us the basis for the modern academic noun.
And now we know. So the next time a professor or a journal or a co-worker asks you for either an abstract or a précis, you can look them straight in the eye and say, “Would a synopsis be alright?”
Stay curious,
Joel
Right now, at least 30 of you are having flashbacks to your first five-paragraph essay. My apologies.
If you’re old enough to understand that reference, even if only through the 1987 Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd version like me, uhm, drink some water and remember to take your pills.
The link leading to the source is dead and googling the source led me to several sketchy websites that set off all my browser’s alarms so I have been unable to verify it. If anyone has a good verifying source, please let me know.
As always, everything eventually goes back to PIE - Proto-Indo-European. The description above, for precis, is slightly more complicated than I make it out to be here, but basically, this is the standard Latin to French to English route.