Today's Word "Jizz"
Published in Vocabulary
jizz \JIZ\ (noun) - The immediate, characteristic impression given by an animal or plant.\
"I tell you, she was walking a fox on a leash. It was like seeing a dog with the jizz of a cat."
The story goes that this word originated in a form of aircraft-recognition practice, common among fighter-pilots during World War II. The pilots were given brief glimpses of silhouetted models of enemy and friendly aircraft, and gradually developed the ability to tell friend from foe quickly and reliably. The gestalt impression thus formed was called "General Impression of Shape and Size"abbreviated to GISS and pronounced "jizz." Unfortunately for the story, the pronunciation seems implausible (why not "giss" or "jiss"?), and English-speaking fighter pilots of the appropriate era deny knowledge of the acronym. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary finds "jizz" in bird-watching use well before the war, but sheds no light on its true origins.
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