As a noun, an excerpt is a short part taken from a longer text, film, or piece of music. As a verb, to excerpt means to select and copy out such a part.
It comes from Latin 'excerptum', the past participle of 'excerpere', meaning 'to pluck out', from 'ex-' (out) and 'carpere' (to pluck, seize). The idea is of picking out a small piece from a larger whole.
An excerpt is like a movie trailer for a book or speech: a carefully chosen slice meant to represent the whole. What gets excerpted often shapes how people judge a work they’ve never fully seen.
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