gesticulate

present singular third person gesticulates · participle present gesticulating · participle past gesticulated · past gesticulated

1. intransitiveTo make gestures or motions, as in speaking.

   ... groups of dancers were wheeling, plunging, and gesticulating while the ogre, more aphasic than before, mumbled at full strength ...

   1954, Kingsley Amis, chapter 12, in Lucky Jim

   2 more examples

   A "Haka" is the native dance, answering to the corroboree of the Australian aboriginals, and we were anxious to see it. […] Later in the evening, however, the complaisant Herekiekie entertained a small and select party at a "Haka" in his "whare" or house (pronounced wharry). It was exactly what I expected. The performers, all male, stood in a row, one, slightly advanced, acting as fugleman. They shouted and gesticulated with the most hideous and revolting gestures, grimaces, and yells.

   1876 January 28, “A Week among the Maoris of Lake Taupo”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XXXIII, number 193, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place, →OCLC, page 65

   He's delusional, and obsessed with a girl named Claire, and he says such things as: "I know she loves me, she just doesn't know it yet." And he gesticulates wildly, as though he were a fop in the court of Louis XIV.

   2005 January 30, Ariel Love, “Half empty”, in The Guardian

   Synonyms: gesture

2. transitiveTo say or express through gestures.

   […]the TV programme Friends is influencing not only the way Irish people speak but also how they gesticulate. Now almost every utterance is accompanied by arms outstretched and palms turned upwards."

   2004 December 6, Irish Times