gist

Meaning

Noun

1. (countable) The main idea or substance, or the most essential part, of a longer or more complicated matter; the crux, the heart, the pith.
2. (countable, dated) The essential ground for action in a lawsuit, without which there is no cause of action; the gravamen.
3. (Nigeria, uncountable) Gossip, rumour; (countable) an instance of this.
4. (countable, uncountable) A sharable snippet of source code, especially on the version controlled pastebin-hosting site GitHub Gist.

Verb

1. (transitive) 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. (Nigeria, intransitive) To talk idly; chat; also, to gossip.

Synonyms

essence

core

point

substance

meaning

kernel

summary

purport

heart

❤️

pith

main point

nub

marrow

essentials

abstract

motive

nitty-gritty

outline

idea

💡

opinion

essential part

epitome

essential

content

sum

burden

center

heart and soul

meat

🥩

tenor

quiddity

theme

centre

nucleus

effect

main points

inwardness

object

aim

sense

significance

statement

stone

🪨

subject

substantial

summery

table of contents

text

thrust

vital

Translations

Kern

Hauptpunkt

Wesentliche

essentiel

essenza

wezen

özet

esencia

quid

substance

essentie

ουσία

noyau

🪨

essence

fond

🔙

Pronounced as (IPA)

/d͡ʒɪst/

Etymology

Cognate with French: gésir

Cognate with Anglo-Norman: (cest) action gist

In summary

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.