It's the Word of the Day podcast for September 7th.
Today's word is gist, spelled G-I-S-T.
Gist is a noun.
Gist, which almost always appears in the phrase the gist,
refers to the general or basic meaning of something written or said.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the BBC.
His daughter dismissed the film they were watching early on, Tim Allen explained,
because she'd already got the gist of what was going to happen.
The main point overarching theme, essence.
That's gist in a nutshell.
The gist of gist, if you will.
The gist of a conversation, argument, story,
or what have you, is what we rely on when the actual words and details are only imperfectly recalled, inessential,
or too voluminous to recount in their entirety.
Gist was borrowed from the Anglo-French legal phrase, l'action giste,
the action lies or is based on in the 17th century.
And it was originally used in law as a term referring to the foundation
or grounds for a legal action without which the action would not be legally sustainable.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
Visit merriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.