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brief: brief: [14] Brief comes via Old French bref from Latin brevis ‘short’, which is probably related to Greek brakhús ‘short’, from which English gets the combining form brachy-, as in brachycephalic. Latin produced the nominal derivative breve ‘letter’, later ‘summary’, which came into English in the 14th century in the sense ‘letter of authority’ (German has brief simply meaning ‘letter’).

The notion of an ‘abbreviation’ or ‘summary’ followed in the next century, and the modern legal sense ‘summary of the facts of a case’ developed in the 17th century. This formed the basis of the verbal sense ‘inform and instruct’, which is 19th-century. Briefs ‘underpants’ are 20th-century. The musical use of the noun breve began in the 15th century when, logically enough, it meant ‘short note’.

Modern usage, in which it denotes the longest note, comes from Italian breve. Other derivatives of brief include brevity [16], introduced into English via Anglo-Norman brevete; abbreviate [15], from late Latin abbreviāre (which is also the source, via Old French abregier, of abridge [14]); and breviary ‘book of church services’ [16], from Latin breviārium.
=> abbreviate, abridge, brevity
digest: digest: [15] English took the verb digest from dīgest-, the past participle of Latin dīgerere. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dī- ‘apart’ and gerere ‘carry’, and originally meant ‘divide, distribute’ – a sense which developed via ‘dissolve’ into the specifically physiological ‘dissolve and obtain nutrients from food in the body’.

A further semantic offshoot of ‘distribute’ was ‘orderly arrangement’, and in fact the earliest use of the word in English was as the noun digest ‘summary of information’ [14], from Latin dīgesta, the neuter plural of the past participle, literally ‘things arranged’.
=> congest, gesture, ingest
abstract (n.): "abridgement or summary of a document," mid-15c., from abstract (adj.). The general sense of "a smaller quantity containing the virtue or power of a greater" [Johnson] is recorded from 1560s.
blouse (n.): 1828 (from 1822 as a French word in English), from French blouse, "workman's or peasant's smock" (1788), origin unknown. Perhaps akin to Provençal (lano) blouso "short (wool)" [Gamillscheg]. Another suggestion [Klein] is that it is from Medieval Latin pelusia, from Pelusium, a city in Upper Egypt, supposedly a clothing manufacturing center in the Middle Ages.
In Paris, a very slovenly, loose, drawn frock, with most capacious sleeves, had been introduced called a blouse. Some of our priestesses of the toilet seemed emulous of copying this deshabille, with some slight alterations, but we never wish to see it on the symmetrical form of a British lady. ["Summary of Fashion for 1822," in "Museum of Foreign Literature and Science," Jan.-June 1823]
brief (n.): from Latin breve (genitive brevis), noun derivative of adjective brevis (see brief (adj.)) which came to mean "letter, summary," specifically a letter of the pope (less ample and solemn than a bull), and thus came to mean "letter of authority," which yielded the modern, legal sense of "summary of the facts of a case" (1630s).
extract (n.): mid-15c., "digest or summary of something which has been written at greater length," from Late Latin extractum, noun use of neuter of extractus, past participle of extrahere "to draw out" (see extract (v.)). Physical sense of "that which is extracted," especially "something drawn from a substance by distillation or other chemical process" is from 1580s.
resume (n.): also résumé, 1804, "a summary," from French résumé, noun use of past participle of Middle French resumer "to sum up," from Latin resumere (see resume (v.)). Meaning "biographical summary of a person's career" is 1940s.
roundup (n.): also round-up, by 1869 in the cattle drive sense; from verbal phrase round up "to collect in a mass" (1610s; specifically of livestock from 1847); see round (v.) + up (adv.). Meaning "summary of news items" is recorded from 1886.
summa: "A summary of a subject", Early 18th century: from Latin, literally 'sum total' (a sense reflected in Middle English).