Dictionary

gesticulatory en · ADJ

Etymology

From gesticulate + -ory.

Meanings

1. Of or relating to a gesticulation; accompanied by gesticulation.
   • This mishap has hardly interrupted her animated gesticulatory discourse on the estate she’d visited the week before […] 2016, Margaret Drabble, The Dark Flood Rises:
   • a gesticulatory movement
   • On this theme Klesmer’s eloquence, gesticulatory and other, went on for a little while like stray fireworks accidentally ignited, and then sank into immovable silence. 1876, George Eliot, chapter 22, in Daniel Deronda, volume 2, page 60:
   • The skinny fellow, with gesticulatory accompaniment, shouted out a long-winded piece about the Chinese people versus American Imperialism. 1961, Chin Yang Lee, chapter 12, in Cripple Mah and the New Order, page 63:
2. Making frequent gesticulations.
   • There were vast surging crowds in the Rue de Rivoli, and much bunting, and soldiers and gesticulatory policemen. 1908, Arnold Bennett, chapter 4, in The Old Wives’ Tale, page 371:
   • Aziz Akkaya, the wildly gesticulatory Besiktas coach, was sufficiently outraged that he earned a second technical foul, the home fans booing and baying as they waved him out of the arena. 2024 April 10, Simon Burnton, “London Lions win first EuroCup after second leg fightback against Besiktas”, in The Guardian:
   • The French loungers are gesticulatory, and shoulders, arms, fingers, eyes and eyebrows help out the tongue's rapid utterance; but they are never rude or boisterous. 1873, Various, Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11,:

Forms

Synonyms

gesticulative