1. A complete legal code, esp. of a nation or a system of law, together with commentary.
2. (cap. & pl.) The 50 books constituting Justinian’s Digest (one of the four works making up the Corpus Juris Civilis), first published in A.D. 533. • The substance of 2,000 treatises was distilled into this abridgment. One estimate is that 3 million lines were reduced to 150,000. This prodigious amount of work was carried out in three short years (A.D. 530–533) by a commission of 17 jurists headed by Tribonian. — Also spelled (in reference to German law) pandekt. — Also termed (in sense 2) Digest. Pl. pandects, pandectae. See CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS.
