A collection of passages or fragments selected from a text or literary work; miscellaneous pieces gathered together.
Latin plural or nominalized form of excerptum (the past participle of excerpere). This scholarly term was especially common in medieval manuscript collections where monks would gather 'excerpta' from various sources.
Medieval monks created some of history's first databases by hand, copying out excerpta into commonplace books organized by topic—a practice that directly inspired how we organize digital information today.
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