gest
Americannoun
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gests
plural
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a story or tale.
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a deed or exploit.
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Archaic. a metrical romance or history.
noun
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a notable deed or exploit
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a tale of adventure or romance, esp in verse See also chanson de geste
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
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
Zamyatin indicated that Andropov was also unlikely to attend the country's big gest annual televised spectacular, the Nov. 7 military parade in Red Square.
From Time Magazine Archive
The big gest of these now lie in the Algerian and Libyan Sahara, where drilling rigs, tank farms and smoke-plumed refiner ies give a modern industrial look to the ancient face of the desert.
From Time Magazine Archive
With it, he also took on one of his big gest problems.
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
You don’t want to drop $1 trillion in capital expenditures “and it’s the second mouse that gests the cheese,” Janasiewicz said.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
His new novel sug gests that he may be suffering from over production.
From Time Magazine Archive
True he sat at the feet of the wise men of Greece in the Gardens of Academus, but the eurythmy of their gests fascinated him more than the soberness of their doctrines.
From The Trial of Oscar Wilde From the Shorthand Reports by Anonymous
Thus had Achilles his owne gests design'd, He had his genius Homer far outshin'd.
From The Lucasta Poems by Richard Lovelace
He does not assert that the earth was stopped on its axis, but sug- gests "refraction" as a way out of the difficulty.
From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 5 (of 12) Dresden Edition?Discussions by Robert Green Ingersoll
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
