Aww, thanks. It’s nice to have one’s work recognized 
This is a compositional fallacy, and your conclusion is contrary to appearances. It seems that this word enjoys fairly common usage in the context of legal education in the United States.
It shouldn’t be too hard to reconcile this with your experience, if you consider that vocabulary varies regionally. Is the transfer student who asks if there’s a bubbler on the floor putting on airs? Does the owner of the blank stare this is met with have a poor vocabulary?
Lakai hasn’t specified whether this e-mail exchange was with a student at his own uni or someone cross country. We still don’t know for sure if it’s a regional thing or if there is just a minority of educators who are in accord with most of the English-speaking world in finding some value in using a a more specific word for this type of writing assignment. Personally, I think I would be annoyed to have to make do with using the same word for a précis as I would for an abstract. If someone says that they’re writing a “précis,” I understand that it will not be a simple abridgment of a text, but a detailed analysis of the significance of the text. “Abstract” does not carry this information.
I’m a big fan of having different words for different concepts, even if they are closely-related. A Chinese friend has told me that the same Chinese word does double-duty for what we would call either a “pimple” or a “freckle.” This would annoy me to no end, particularly if this word was used in describing a blind date. (I suppose it’s possible that my friend simply had a piss-poor vocabulary.)
This particular example of asking too much of a word doesn’t annoy me as much as extending the meaning of words such as “sanction” or “literally” to include their antonyms (which effectively renders them useless as carriers of meaning in many cases,) but it does seem silly to me to insist that poor “abstract” ought to be good enough for anyone. Why not do away with “summary,” “synopsis,” “outline,” “brief,” and “abridgment?”
This definition of precis begs to differ.
So much for the whole, “specific words to mean specific things” idea.
Or are you going to argue that the meaning of precis in texas is a regionalism?
How? Note the bits emphasized in red:
The point of the exercise is to show that you have a thorough understanding of the material. An abstract does not have the same emphasis on capturing the whole thing, and will often be a Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Reader’s Digest condensed version - containing entire statements taken directly from the larger work, and omitting elaboration. This approach is useful for making a published thesis accessible, but considerably less useful for determining whether or not the writer comprehends what they have read.
Précis - “Here is a restatement of this other work in my own words, as completely and concisely as possible.”
Abstract - “Here is the gist of the complete work, in a short summary for your convenience.”
You previously described it as a “detailed analysis of the significance of the text.”
The link calls it, “An exact replica in miniature of the work.”
I don’t know how I can be more clear on the difference.
Didn’t you just do that ? 
I wouldn’t automatically think someone throwing their field’s jargon around was being pretentious, simply that they’re so used to it and people understanding it, they don’t do that mental gear-shifting to be more in tune with their audience.
Nor would I think they were being condescending if, having been told their audience wasn’t quite up to speed on the jargon, they went overboard with that gear-shifting and explained everything or used only very simple words for fear of not being understood.
Tones, attitudes and intentions matter, too.
So, if you throw ERCP around without explaining, and people go “Bwuh ?” and you explain what it means, you’re not pretentious. If you explain what it means while rolling your eyes, you’re an ass.
This is semantic. If you want to latch onto this single phrase as the definition, it’s contradicted within the same text. The idea is that a précis contains effectively as much information as the subject text. An equivalent level of detail, but restated. “Not a simple abridgment.” As I said earlier:
Does this substantially differ from the way that “précis” is defined in your link? Do you really not see the utility of having a word distinct from “abstract” which carries these connotations?
Or is it really better to use the same word for both purposes, with the advantage presumably being that you’re not borrowing from French?
But you have standard accent and perceived standard accent, and if I change my standard accent to fit what it “should” be, is that better or worse?
I’m from the states, but live in Japan. It’s still easier for me to say carry-okie when I talk to Americans. But ahneemay has become entrenched in my brain. Should I make the effort to say annimay instead?
I guess I’m ok with people I don’t know thinking I’m pretentious. It’s all about perception, I suppose.
There’s too much to read here. Could someone please summarize or précisize it?
Some people don’t like it if other people use words they don’t know - they find it snotty.
Some people use uncommon words because they are the words they know - they don’t think they’re being snotty.
I had to use a grinny smiley because I couldn’t find a snotty smiley.
I think rolly eyes looks like a snotty smilie because he reminds me of a teeny tiny booger.
2 points:
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the fact that it was a 1st year law student lends a presumption of posturing and mind games to the whole conversation. I have to admit I can’t fail to see it through that lens. It’s ever so fun watching the braggarts get smacked down to size by the forced curve.
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I was re-reading “Heliconia Spring” by Brian Aldiss on the subway and he used the word “hypogean” which, after thinking about it and considering the context, I determined had something to do with that which is under the earth (hypo+ gaia) , but then I thought, “Really? I can understand wanting something more flowery than “underground,” but “subterreanean” just wasn’t good enough for you?” And then I thought of this thread.
So, I have found the word I consider more pretentious than “precis.”
Hypogean
This,* exactly*, IMHO. I haven’t read the whole thread, so forgive me if someone already said this…but isn’t it pretentious when someone, in the midst of a normal English discourse, insists on pronouncing their own foreign-language-derived name in the “original” language’s pronunciation? (NPR’s Claudio Sanchez, I’m looking at you!) I don’t mean just pronouncing the sounds with their English equivalents (like, saying “hoe-ZAY” for “José”) – that’s fine. I mean pronouncing it with the “original” language’s phonemes which are totally foreign to English.
Similarly, when I say my name to Spanish speakers who speak little or no English, I don’t say “John” (my first name) exactly as in English, because that “j” sound doesn’t exist in Spanish. (The “ll/y” sound is the closest equivalent, although “ch” works almost as well.)
Judging from the number of your posts, Lakai, I see you are a Straight Dope habitué.
Do some of you pronounce ballet with a t, then? If unusual pronunciation is the guide to pretentiousness, then surely that’s pretentious too?
Precis is NOT identical in meaning or usage to summary. There are links to the definitions in earlier posts, but in usage, the advantages of the word precis are:
It is exactly the same in verb and noun form
It is unambiguous, unlike ‘abstract’
It is short - this could matter in things like newspaper articles or even Twitter.
Sure, it could be used in a pretentious way - I can totally imagine Niles Crane asking Freddy for a précis of his second-grade book report - but just using the word itself isn’t pretentious at all.
I’m also astounded at the number of people on here who not only don’t know the word, but claim that hardly anyone else knows the word either. Sometimes a word just happens to pass you by, you know? It doesn’t mean that the majority of people have that in common with you. Granted, most people without an honours degree (or equivalent self-teaching) wouldn’t know it, but they wouldn’t know ‘abstract’ in the ‘summary’ sense either.
Just because it isn’t necessarily pretentious to use uncommon words doesn’t mean that such words aren’t often used pretentiously. If the word is being used well, its meaning is being observed, and a more common word wouldn’t satisfy, then it makes sense to use an obscure word. But if a more common word would satisfy, it’s not unreasonable to suspect the rare-word-speaker of pretension. It’s not anti-intellectual to observe that there are a lot of intellectual show-offs in the world.
Yes. Uncommon words are mainly about connotation rather than absolute meaning. And choosing the word with a connotation that complements (or contrasts with) the meaning you’re trying to convey is what makes language an art rather than something purely utilitarian.
I actually didn’t know the word either, and I’m an English major-- I wrote summaries for lots of stuff. I can see why people think that other people don’t know a word. If you never hear the word used in your workplace or friend group, it’s common for people to make assumptions about the population at large from this sort of input. You need an actual study to get hard data about who knows what words, but that’s not how our brains tend to operate.
On a related note, is dint a common word? I thought it was really common, but I was playing boggle with some people (boggle people tend to know words and such) and no one at the time had heard of it. Maybe I should start a poll 
I just tried a Google search for “wrote a précis” and “wrote an abstract”. The latter was more than twice as popular.
I also tried “read a précis” and “read an abstract”. The latter was more than 24X more popular.
Without first heading off to OneLook Dictionary to check, I would say it’s fairly common - even colloquially. But then down South, so are words like “persnickety”, so I don’t really know for sure.