Meaning & use
summarize
Last updated
Meanings
verbtransitive
To give a short account of the main points of something longer.
Grammar: Takes an object: summarize the article. It is not used without one.
Patterns
- summarize something
- summarize something for someone
- summarize what someone said
Can you summarize the chapter in two sentences?
She summarized the meeting for the people who were absent.
The teacher asked us to summarize the story in our own words.
verbtransitive
To express the essence of something in a brief, clear way, as a remark or an event does.
Grammar: Often has a thing as the subject: this sentence summarizes the problem.
Patterns
- something summarizes something
Her last line summarizes the whole film.
One photograph summarized the mood of the entire year.
The chart summarizes sales over the past decade.
Word forms
| third person singular | summarizes |
|---|---|
| past tense | summarized |
| past participle | summarized |
| -ing form | summarizing |
Common combinations
- briefly summarize
- Please briefly summarize your proposal.
- summarize the findings
- The report summarizes the findings of the survey.
- summarize in your own words
- Summarize the paragraph in your own words.
- to summarize
- To summarize, we need more time and more money.
- summarize the plot
- He summarized the plot without giving away the ending.
Synonyms and how they differ
- sum up
- Sum up is the phrasal, more conversational form and is often used for a closing statement.
- outline
- Outline gives the main structure or steps, whereas summarize gives the main ideas in brief prose.
- condense
- Condense means to make a text shorter while keeping most of its contents, whereas summarize picks out the key points.
- recap
- Recap is informal and usually repeats what has already been said or happened.
Opposites
Word family
- summary noun
- a short account of main points
- summarization noun
- the act of summarizing
- summarizer noun
- a person or tool that summarizes
- summarily adverb
- quickly and without ceremony; unrelated in meaning to summary
Commonly confused: summarize or summarise?
summarize vs summarise
Summarise is the British spelling of the same verb. Summarize is standard in American English.
Practice
After the long lecture, the professor asked us to ____ the main argument in one paragraph.
Choose one answer.
Summarize means to state the main points briefly. Summon means to call someone to come, and sum alone does not take this pattern.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “summarize”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.