You know how you can tell a Frenchwoman or a Spaniard in a crowd without hearing them speak a word? Well, a friend of my husband’s who is interested in anthropology refers to that bundle of cultural characteristics as the jizz.
It was not a word with which I was familiar outside a fairly grubby slang meaning familiar to Veronica’s generation. But I gather that it is widely used in ornithological practice, with reference to recognition of a species in action by its special behaviour and appearance.
The word appeared no earlier than 1922, in the work of T.A. Coward (1867–1933). He was a Cheshire man, the son of a textile bleacher and Congregational minister who was a keen naturalist and a founding collector for what became the natural history section of the Manchester Museum.
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