syntopicon

English

Etymology

Coined as the name of an Encyclopaedia Britannica publication compiled by Mortimer Adler, A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas (1952).

Noun

syntopicon

1. (rare) A publication that indexes and compares a number of works in some field.
   • 1966, Joseph Samuel Bois, The art of awareness: a textbook on general semantics:

     Obviously, this makes for a syntopicon that is extremely personal, that defies all the rules of classification by verbal labels...

   • 1971, American Medical Association, Archives of general psychiatry:

     ...the production of a syntopicon of Freud's concepts...

   • 1989, John Stewart, Avoiding common pilot errors: an air traffic controller's view:

     Like most of you though, I would like to see an expanded index or perhaps a "syntopicon" added to all of these documents.

Derived terms

• syntopical