summa
Americannoun
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summae,
plural
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summas
plural
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a comprehensive work or series of works covering, synthesizing, or summarizing a particular field or subject.
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a work or series of works that is a summary of all human knowledge.
noun
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medieval Christianity theol a compendium of theology, philosophy, or canon law, or sometimes of all three together. The Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, written between 1265 and 1274, was the most famous of all such compendia
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rare a comprehensive work or survey
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of summa
1400–50; late Middle English < Medieval Latin; Latin: sum
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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He graduated summa cum laude from New York University in 1948, and earned a master’s in economics two years later and a Ph.D in economics in 1977.
From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 2026
She graduated summa cum laude from Duke University, where she studied public policy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 1, 2026
He received his BA summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1995 and his JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1998.
From Salon ● Aug. 7, 2025
She graduated summa cum laude from Michigan, earned her doctoral degree at MIT, where she first started her work on black hole imaging in 2013, then became a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2024
In 1937, at age eighteen, I graduated from West Virginia State summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and French.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
Like St. Thomas Aquinas, the scholastic known for working so long on his theological summae that he sometimes achieved spiritual visions, hackers reached transcendent internal states through sheer mental focus and physical exhaustion.
From Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams
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