Giclée (pronounced [ʒiːˈkleɪ] ”zhee-clay” or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French IPA: [ʒiˈkle]), is an invented name (i.e. a neologism) for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word “giclée” is derived from the French language word “le gicleur” meaning “nozzle”, or more specifically “gicler” meaning “to squirt, spurt, or spray”^[1]. It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne^[2], a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial “Iris proofs” from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

So the key to the use of this fancy term is that it denotes “high quality printing”.  What determines this high quality?  Well that is for another discussion coming soon.