Regest

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A written abstract that summarizes the contents of an archival document, especially a medieval charter or official record
2. A concise digest of a historical document's key points, prepared for archival or scholarly reference
3. An abstract listing the essential details of an old deed, charter, or register entry for researchers

Etymology: The word comes from the Latin "regesta", the neuter plural of "regestum", a past participle of "regerere", meaning "to record" or "to enter in a list". Its English form is a late borrowing that reached the language by way of Old French "regestes", the plural of a noun that had itself been drawn from the same Latin root. A "regest" is therefore, at its heart, a summary of a longer document: an entry copied out in brief so that a clerk or scholar could find it again without reading the whole thing. The English word shares its ancestry with "register", which came through Old French "registre" from Medieval Latin "registrum". The two words are close relatives rather than identical twins, and their paths split at the level of the Latin plural form. "Register" became the everyday word for a book of entries, while "regest" stayed a specialist term for the abstract itself, the short digest of a charter, deed or record that archivists and historians used to navigate large collections.

Synonyms: register, record, list