English

Noun

gists

1. (rare) plural of gist
   • There's evidence that even our unconscious efficiently only stores the gists of memories.
   • He made a listing of the gists of 1,000 consecutive episodes.
   • The gists of the reports, however, their logic, their structural coherence, are molded by a concern to reconstruct the past.
   • 1601, Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, 1st ed., book X, chapter XXIII “Of Swallowes, Ousles, or Merles, Thrushes, Stares or Sterlings, Turtles, and Stockdoves.”, p. 282:
     • These Quailes have their set gists, to wit, ordinarie resting and baiting places. [These quails have their set gists, to wit, ordinary resting and baiting places.]
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “chapter XIX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:

     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.