pandect (PAN-dekt) noun

   1. A comprehensive digest or complete treatise.

   2. pandects. A complete body of laws; a legal code.

   3. Pandects. A digest of Roman civil law, compiled for the emperor
      Justinian in the sixth century A.D. and part of the Corpus Juris
      Civilis. In this sense, also called Digest.

[Latin pandectes, encyclopedia, from Greek pandektes, all-receiving : pan-,
 + dektes, receiver (from dekhesthai, to receive, accept).]

   "These phenomena were memorialized in the novels of Zola, themselves
   accumulations between covers of a vast aggregation of sedulously
   recorded trivia. Flaubert had his contemporaries' number, however.
   Looking askance at this pretence to pandects, the empirical mastering
   of all knowledge on a given topic and the boiling it down to easily
   swallowed doses, he reduced it to absurdity in his savant idiots
   Bouvard and Pecuchet."
   Laurence Senelick, Double Vision: Second Empire Theatre in Stereographs,
   Theatre Research International, Spring 1999.

This week's theme: words about books and writing.

.............................................................................
The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is,
certainly is one of degree and not of kind. -Charles Darwin, naturalist and
author (1809-1882) [The Descent of Man]

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Pronunciation:
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