Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!hc!beta!unm-la!unmvax!nmtsun!john
From: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: `jizz' (as used by birders)
Message-ID: <1191@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 87 19:21:57 GMT
References: <415@picuxa.UUCP> <2725@vanhalen.rutgers.edu>
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 29
Keywords: jizz, gestalt, jargon, flame=mild
Summary: What's wrong with `gestalt'?

I had never heard this usage until about two issues ago in _Birding_,
the American Birding Association's publication; I don't have the
reference handy.  I don't mind jargon when necessary, but this one
seems to be either superfluous or a replacement for the old buzzword
`gestalt', the way I've seen it used.  Greg Pasquariello's original
phrasing was:

>> the LBB's seem to have an *extremely* long winged "jizz".

Applying ``The Elements of Style'' by Strunk and White (Omit Needless
Words), I would rewrite that as:

>> the LBB's seem *extremely* long-winged.

According to the _Birding_ reference, it is also used this way:

     Mutt: I think that was a Black Scoter, not a Surf.
     Jeff: How do you know?
     Mutt: By the `jizz'.

People I've birded with typically use the word `gestalt' in situations
like this, meaning that Mutt can't say whether it was plumage, flight
style, habitat, etc. that made him think it was a Black Scoter, but
his long experience with Black Scoters allows him to snap-call the
species based on the totality, or gestalt, of his perceptions.
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
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