Why do we diminish ‘compendious’?
My husband has been telling me, at some length, about the Gamages Christmas catalogue that fired his childhood imagination and boyish avarice. One item promised infinite entertainment in a box: the Compendium of Games. Fundamentally it was a folding board, squared for chess and draughts on one side, marked for backgammon on the other. Its ludic capability depended on two dice and an accompanying booklet of rules. And now I come across a quotation in the Oxford English Dictionary illustrating the use of the word compendium: ‘Guide to the compendium of games. Comprising rules for playing – backgammon, besique, chess…’ The dictionary estimates the date as about 1899, which is
