Other forms: gists
The gist is the essential point of what was said. Get the gist, the gist of it, that is the gist.
It always takes the definite article and always of, and it means the substance stripped of the detail. It comes from an Anglo-French legal phrase meaning the action lies, marking where the heart of a case rested. The g is soft, as in gin.
1noungistThe essential point of what was said.
“I didn't understand every word, but I got the gist of what she was saying.”
gist is a substance.
Anglo-French cest action gist means this action lies, from gesir, to lie, marking the point a case rests on.
Proto-Indo-European
*(H)yeh₁-
Old French
gist
English, today
gist
Built from
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 of GitHub Gist, introduced 2008.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA