** Reply to note from tweeters at u.washington.edu Tue, 8 Oct 1996 00:01:16 PDT


> >In response to numerous postings about the B-2, William H. Lawrence writes:
> >
> >>jizz --birders picked this up from british fighter pilots wwII
> >
> >I'm interested in the etymology of this word. Did the pilots use the word
> >in the same sense that birders use it? Is its useage standardized amoung
> >birders? I don't recall any of the books I have looked through on birding
> >saying much, if anything, about jizz.
> >
> >Ed Schulz
> >Everett, WA
> >eschulz at eldec.com
> >
> >
> Ed---re jizz
>
> i first encountered the word in RTP's foreword to Shorebirds by
> hayman, marchant, prater. page 11 RTP writs--" the sophisticated
> wadere-watcher sometimes speaks of a bird's "jizz", a term
> derived
> from the fighter pilots' acronym, "gis" --general
impression > and shape."
> >

For those with access to a Web Browser or Lynx, I would suggest going to
http://www.dejanews.com and entering jizz in the search field. This should
bring up lots of hits from the Bird Chat usenet list where this subject was
discussed at length a few months ago. The etymology is older than most
people think, and as with many things to do with language, appears to have
evolved from the Irish!

- Jack

Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
Canada
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca