Gist
Posted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 3:15 pm
"upshot" was used by MTC in another discussion, and I got distracted researching it. In the process, I found that "gist" differed from how I have always read it and used it. The word originally meant a bird's resting place. It went on to mean the pith or central meaning of a sentence, paragraph, chapter, or speech. Now many media articles I read begin with what academic articles used to call an abstract, but the current term is "take-away." The gist of what I am saying is I always thought the word referred more to a quick scan of a document and a loose statement of what all it said, a short summary. But the word seems much more specific than the implication I gave it.