gest

American  

[jest] / dʒɛst /

Or geste

noun

1. a story or tale.

2. a deed or exploit.

3. Archaic. a metrical romance or history.

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gest British  

/ dʒɛst /

noun

1. a notable deed or exploit

2. a tale of adventure or romance, esp in verse See also chanson de geste

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Etymology

Origin of gest

1250–1300; Middle English < Old French geste action, exploit < Latin gesta exploits, neuter plural past participle of gerere to carry on, perform

Explanation

A gest is something you would read about in a tale of King Arthur, such as a heroic deed or exploit by one of Arthur's knights. Geste is another spelling of the word. A gest may also be a poem or story about an epic deed or exploit. For example, The Song of Roland is an 11th-century French poem or gest about the heroic deeds of the emperor Charlemagne's knights. In fact, the French word geste is where we got our word gest in the medieval period, since French literature was the main source of such stories and poems. The Song of Roland belongs to a category of poem called chanson de geste in French, "song of heroic deeds."

Example Sentences

If a phrase sparks the gest of song memory endures longer — like the hum of a taut string in the dark.

From New York Times • Jan. 28, 2021

And by the fortune of war it is U.S. flyers who have had the big gest part in creating that pattern.

From Time Magazine Archive

It does sug gest, however, that all education should ideally be integrated with workaday life, using flexible, out-of-school approaches that make education start in very early childhood and end only with death.

From Time Magazine Archive

She also has to di gest the fact that her half sister, too, was in love with the B.B.

From Time Magazine Archive

“You could see your neighbor very dimly. Those ten seconds were the lon- gest ten seconds that I ever experienced.”

From "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin