Giclée (/ʒiːˈkleɪ/ zhee-KLAY) is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name originally applied to fine art prints created on a modified Iris printer in a process invented in the late 1980s. It has since been used loosely to mean any fine-art, most of the times archival, inkjet print. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops to suggest high quality printing but since it is an unregulated word it has no associated warranty of quality. The word giclée was adopted by Jack Duganne around 1990. He was a printmaker working at Nash Editions. He wanted a name for the new type of prints they were producing on a modified Iris printer, a large-format, high-resolution industrial prepress proofing inkjet printer on which the paper receiving the ink is attached to a rotating drum and that they had adapted for fine-art printing. He was specifically looking for a word that would differentiate them from regular commercial IRIS prints then used as proofs in the commercial printing industry. "Giclée" is based on the French word gicleur, the French technical term for a jet or a nozzle, and the verb coming from it "gicler" (to squirt out). "Une giclée" (noun) means a spurt of some liquid. The French verb form gicler means to spray, spout, or squirt. It describes the movement of a liquid that is suddenly under violent pressure and has only got a tiny hole to exit the compressed space in which it is. Duganne settled on the noun giclée.

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