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praecisus

Praecisus is a Latin adjective formed as the past participle of the verb praecidere, meaning to cut off in front or beforehand. The base components are prae- "before" and caedere "to cut," with the participial suffix -sus, yielding praecisus. The masculine nominative singular is praecisus; feminine praecisa; neuter praecisum. In classical Latin, praecisus primarily denotes something literally cut off or separated in advance. The form can appear in textual descriptions that emphasize interruption, truncation, or preemptive division; its figurative extension to “conciseness” is not widespread in surviving Latin prose.

In modern English and French, semantic relatives of the idea exist. The noun précis in French and

English,
borrowed
as
a
term
for
a
concise
summary,
is
etymologically
related
in
sense
to
the
notion
of
shortening
a
larger
text,
though
it
derives
from
a
different
linguistic
route
and
is
not
a
direct
descendant
of
praecisus.
The
Latin
term
remains
chiefly
of
interest
to
lexicographers
and
philologists
studying
Latin
morphology
and
historical
semantics,
rather
than
a
living
technical
term
in
contemporary
English.
References
to
praecisus
appear
mainly
in
Latin
dictionaries
and
in
discussions
of
how
Latin
participial
adjectives
are
formed
from
prae-
and
caedere.