Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use gist in a sentence

17 example sentences · noun, verb

Gist means the main idea or substance, or the most essential part, of a longer or more complicated matter; the crux, the heart, the pith. Example: “I don't wanna belabor my point; I'm sure you get the gist.”

Examples of gist by meaning

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

  • I don't wanna belabor my point; I'm sure you get the gist.
  • That was the gist of the lesson from their pastor and "wellwiller" John Robinson.1948, Carl Sandburg, “Store We Up therefore Patience”, in Remembrance Rock, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace & World, →OCLC, part 2, page 103
  • The gists of the reports, however, their logic, their structural coherence, are molded by a concern to reconstruct the past, by antiquarian interest.1988, Baruch Halpern, “Sisera and Old Lace: The Case of Deborah and Yael”, in The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History, San...

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

  • For a simple illustration of the issue, take a look at this gist.2014 November 20, Colin Eberhardt, “Swift Initialization and the Pain of Optionals”, in Scott Logic
  • Every gist created is a tiny repository.2016 February 8, Chris Dawson, Ben Straub, “Gists and the Gist API” (chapter 2), in Building Tools with GitHub, O'Reilly
  • See this gist for an example of how to implement this in a before-hook.a. 2023, “FAQ”, in Feathers

More sentences with gist

  • The gist of the workshop was worldbuilding with worldbreaking in mind.2017, “Five Ways to Build and Break a World”, in Hallie Tibbetts, editor, Sirens: Collected Papers on Women in Fantasy, 2012–2015…. From the entry worldbreaking
  • The gist of Deloitte survey is that person-to-person communications is being altered by smartphones.2016 December 12, Larry Dignan, “Consumers check smartphones more than 9 billion times a day and enable new businesses”, in ZDNET…. From the entry screenaholic
  • I don't know what the proper term for her was, but the main gist was evident-she was large and green.2018, Vasily Mahanenko, The Phantom Castle, Magic Dome Books, page 64. From the entry orcess
  • Anyway, even if these are wrong, I get the gist.2001 February 26, Lemming, “CABLE BOX DESCRAMBLER PLANS ((LEGAL)),.,.,,.,,,,,,. 7063”, in alt.support.stop-smoking (Usenet), archived from…. From the entry Never Ending September
  • Different tale-tellers describe the actual meeting in different ways, but the gist is that at that moment, Vicki was discovered.1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 296. From the entry taleteller
  • “Excuse me, spiders,” was the gist of my visit, “I, your friend fly, have entered your parlor in error.1963, Jack Ludwig, “A Summit of Palefaces”, in Confusions, Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society Publishers Ltd, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 227. From the entry shmok
  • I don't remember the exact words the boy used, but the gist was, "We must never, ever, miss a chance to do this again."2015, Jonathan Lethem, “Track-by-track [Jonathan Lethem on Talking Heads: What was the Fate of the Fear of Music Songs in Live…. From the entry perihelion
  • Drug companies are even giving doctors "free gists, free meals, free education, special deals" in order for those doctors to accept their drug deal.2007, Jonas E. Alexis, In the Name of Education, page 84. From the entry drug deal
  • Where Lulu was a bit girlier and took more delight in gossip, Tea claims to be more focused on safety, but they general gist is similar.2025 July 25, Lindsey Ellefson, “I Knew the Viral 'Tea' App Was Trouble, but I Didn't Expect a Data Breach”, in Lifehacker. From the entry girly
  • Many NigE slang expressions have a short life, while others have more staying power, and some, like gist, described earlier, are perhaps colloquial rather than slang.[2019, David Jowitt, “Lexis and discourse”, in Nigerian English, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 137. From the entry fashy
  • The gist of this horribly repugnant scene is that a person can be forced, because of the threat of unbearable pain, to misreflect upon his perceptions.1990, Reinhardt Grossmann, The Fourth Way: A Theory of Knowledge, page 117. From the entry misreflect

Meaning of gist

  1. noun The main idea or substance, or the most essential part, of a longer or more complicated matter; the crux, the heart, the pith.
  2. noun The essential ground for action in a lawsuit, without which there is no cause of action; the gravamen.
  3. noun Gossip, rumour; (countable) an instance of this.

Full definition of gist

Questions about gist in a sentence

How do you use gist in a sentence?
Gist is used as a noun and verb. For example: “I don't wanna belabor my point; I'm sure you get the gist.”
What is a short sentence with gist?
“Every gist created is a tiny repository.”
What does gist mean?
Gist means the main idea or substance, or the most essential part, of a longer or more complicated matter; the crux, the heart, the pith.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gist (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use gist in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/gist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.