gist

CEFRC1

/d͡ʒɪst/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    The main point or meaning of something said or written.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    Gossip, rumour; (countable) an instance of this.

Examples

  • Advanced learners of a language would usually get the gist but not the quirks.

  • I got the gist of what he was saying.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. The essential ground for action in a lawsuit, without which there is no cause of action; the gravamen.

  2. The main idea or substance, or the most essential part, of a longer or more complicated matter; the crux, the heart, the pith.

  3. A sharable snippet of source code, especially on the version controlled pastebin-hosting site GitHub Gist.

More examples

In context

  • I don't wanna belabor my point; I'm sure you get the gist.

  • He was handing her something in an envelope, and she was saying “Oh, Jeeves, you've saved a human life,” and he was saying “Not at all, miss.” The gist, of course, escaped me, but I had no leisure to probe into gists.

  • Should they live and build their church in the American wilderness, their worst dangers would rise in and among themselves rather than outside. That was the gist of the lesson from their pastor and "wellwiller" John Robinson.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The blank of the story was that honesty is the best policy.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

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.