abridger

plural abridgers

1. One who abridges, a person who shortens written works.First known use First attested in the mid 16ᵗʰ century.

   I am an abridger. When I tell people, at a party for instance, that I am an abridger, their faces cloud with confusion and I always have to explain. What I do is take the written work of other people and compress it.

   1985, Carol Shields, “Accidents”, in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, published 2004, page 47

   1 more example

   […] while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

   1803 (date written), [Jane Austen], chapter V, in Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC

   Synonyms: summarizer