A literary work or historical text that has been lost; a work known to have existed but no longer survives.
From Latin deperditum (lost, perished), past participle of deperdere (to lose entirely, from de- + perdere, to lose). The word entered English literary scholarship through Latin citations in academic works.
Libraries and textual scholars use 'deperdit' to catalog the ghost library of lost works—scholars know thousands of Roman, Greek, and medieval texts existed because other writers quoted them, but the originals vanished, giving us only fragments.
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