summarial

Summarial is an adjective relating to a summary or the act of summarizing. The term derives from the noun summary, with the suffix -arial forming an adjective in a way that echoes Latin and French-derived usages. In contemporary English, summarial is uncommon outside specialized or historical discourse, where it may be found in discussions of summarize-and-condense practices or in references to summaria and epitomes.

In usage, summarial describes content, notes, or styles that are condensed or restate only the essential points of a longer work. A summarial paragraph, for example, would aim to capture the core arguments without detailed development, while a summarial note might provide a brief restatement of findings. The term is distinct from summative, which more often denotes assessment or conclusions that finalize a process, though some overlap can occur in describing evaluative or concluding summaries.

Historically, summarial language has appeared in editorial theory, philology, and bibliographic contexts to distinguish condensed materials from full texts. Today, writers typically prefer more common terms such as summary, abstract, précis, or digests. In information science and natural language processing, the concept aligns with extractive summarization: producing a summarial representation that preserves key sentences from source material.

See also: summary, abstract, précis, digests, abridgment, summation, summarization.