synopsis

Picture a scholar trying to tame a sprawling book without reading it cover to cover. Greek gave that problem a perfect little machine: syn, meaning 'together,' plus opsis, 'seeing.' Put them side by side and you get σύνοψις, a 'seeing all at once'—the literary equivalent of stepping back from a huge tapestry so the whole pattern snaps into view. The same opsis turns up in words like autopsy and biopsy, where sight is the whole game, while syn shows up in neighbors like synthesis and synergy, all built on the idea of things joining forces. By the 1610s English had borrowed the term for summaries and outlines, and the word still does exactly what the Greeks intended: it lets you see the forest without hauling every tree into the room.