English Explanatory Dictionary

gist

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The main idea or substance, or the most essential part, of a longer or more complicated matter; the crux, the heart, the pith.
  2. The essential ground for action in a lawsuit, without which there is no cause of action; the gravamen.
  3. Gossip, rumour; (countable) an instance of this.
  4. A sharable snippet of source code, especially on the version controlled pastebin-hosting site GitHub Gist.
verb
  1. To extract and present the main ideas or substance, or the most essential parts of (a document, piece of writing, etc.); to abridge, to summarize.
  2. To talk idly; chat; also, to gossip.
noun
  1. A stop for lodging or rest in a journey, or the place where this happens; a rest.
noun
  1. Initialism of gastrointestinal stromal tumor.

Pronunciation

/d͡ʒɪst/ En-us-gist.ogg

Word forms

gist gists gisting gisted gest

Etymology

The noun is derived from Old French gist, a noun use of the third person singular indicative of gesir (“to lie down”) (modern French gésir; compare Anglo-Norman (cest) action gist (literally “(law) (this) action lies”)), from Latin iacēre, the present active infinitive of iaceō (“to lie down, lie prostrate, recline”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(H)yeh₁- (“to throw”) (probably in the sense of something being thrown down). The verb is derived from the noun. The programming sense is a genericized trademark of GitHub Gist, introduced 2008.

Synonyms

bowels sum brass tacks core crux essence gist drift guts gravamen heart heart and soul heartstring heartstrings inwardness kernel marrow meat moral of the story nitty-gritty nub nuts and bolts pith punctum saliens quintessence soul spirit stuff substance tenor thrust condense précis

Derived words

gists
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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