We begin by cutting through any confusion around the term red tape. Since the 1700s, red tape has been a byword for "any official routine or procedure marked by excessive complexity which results in delay or inaction." That colorful term has its origin in the red tape formerly used to bind legal documents in England.

If you've gotten the gist of our story on red tape, following the legal trail of gist won't be any trouble at all. Like red tape, gist had its origin in the court scene of the early 1700s. The essence of that initial legal gist (literally, "it lies" in the French used in medieval England) was "the ground or foundation of a legal action without which it would not be sustainable." Within a century, that gist had been moved into everyday speech with the sense "the main point or part; essence."

Is that enough grimgribber for you? Grimgribber denotes "technical jargon, as of legal matters," and it was born in the literary, not the legal, world. Grimgribber was first heard in an 18th-century play by Sir Richard Steele, where it named an imaginary estate that was the subject of a legal discussion.