Other forms: gesticulating, gesticulated
To gesticulate is to wave your hands about while talking. The arms doing as much work as the words.
The word suggests energy and often frustration, so somebody gesticulating at a traffic warden is not calm. It is a shade more formal and more comic than gesture, which can be a single small movement. It takes at or towards. The noun gesticulation names the whole business, and it appears in descriptions of animated conversation. A gesture, by contrast, can be deliberate and symbolic, like a gesture of goodwill.
1verbgesticulateTo make energetic movements with the hands while speaking.
“He was gesticulating wildly at the far end of the platform.”
Gesticulating is making little gestures. Latin gesticulus was a small mimic gesture, a diminutive of gestus, and behind that stands gerō, to carry or to perform.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eǵ- (drive)
Latin
gesticulor
English, today
gesticulate
Built from
Borrowed from Latin gesticulor. Latin gesticulātus, perfect active participle of gesticulor (“to gesticulate”) (see -ate), from gesticulus (“a mimic gesture”), diminutive of gestus (“gesture”), from gerō (“to bear, carry, perform”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA