First use of the birdwatching term "giss"

Birders frequently use the term "giss" (also spelt "jizz") to describe the difficult-to-define, overall impression of a bird, incorporating features of its general shape, size, flight behaviour, posture and colour as a means of quickly identifying a particular species. The term was first used in print by the British naturalist Thomas Alfred Coward, whose "Country Diary" column for The Manchester Guardian on 6 December 1921 was later adapted for Coward’s 1922 book Bird Haunts and Nature Memories (Frederick Warne and Co., London).

Coward ascribes to a “West Coast Irishman” his first encounter with the word, describing its meaning and context with the following passages: “If we are walking on the road and see, far ahead, someone whom we recognise although we can neither distinguish features nor particular clothes, we may be certain that we are not mistaken; there is something in the carriage, the walk, the general appearance which is familiar; it is, in fact, the individual's jizz.” And, “a single character may supply it, or it may be the combination of many; it may be produced by no one in particular. As a rule it is character rather than characteristics, the tout ensemble of the subject.”

A postscript to the first edition of Coward’s book suggests that “in Webster’s Dictionary, both ‘gis’ and ‘jis’ are given as obsolete variants of “guise” and this seems to be the origin of the expressive word.”