gestural
Americanadjective
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relating to, expressed in, using, or made up of gestures, especially of the hands and arms, head, or upper body.
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(of an act) merely symbolic or done for effect; being merely a token or formality.
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Art. relating to a painting style that emphasizes the physical movement of the artist, characterized by sweeping, energetic brush strokes or by smearing, splashing, etc., rather than small, careful strokes.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A large, gestural 1972 painting attested to a road not taken, while records of his sojourns in Europe and Africa revealed the influence of architecture on abstract structure.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 25, 2025
We understood each other perfectly - with a gestural language that obviously predates human speech.”
From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2024
Moon’s confident performance — smoky voice, headstrong attitude, gestural dance moves — has caught the attention of critics.
From New York Times ● May 8, 2024
Spam is a very funny crack that reduces “meaty painting,” high praise for the gestural muscularity recently demanded of Abstract Expressionist art, to a commercially processed product.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2024
The entire artistic effort to transcend the figurative and the narrative, to explore the abstract and the gestural, to explore its own reality, and to establish new languages testifies to this striving towards emancipation.
From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Nadin, Mihai
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
