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.
Like his poetry, Ashbery’s collection occupies a place at the intersection of representational and abstract, realistic and dream-like, crisp and gestural.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
It’s a distillation of the movement and gestural material seen throughout the work, its “vocabulary,” Liska said.
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2024
We understood each other perfectly - with a gestural language that obviously predates human speech.”
From BBC ● Nov. 16, 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
But the speech, or oral, method is steadily growing in popularity, and gradually supplanting manual spelling and gestural signs.
From What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know by John Dutton Wright
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