Other forms: gestures, gesturing, gestured
A gesture is something you say with your hands instead of your mouth. A wave through a window, a thumbs-up across a noisy room, a finger held to the lips, the shrug that means I have no idea.
Gesture is a verb as well — he gestured at the empty chair, she gestured for us to sit down — and it takes at or towards: you gesture at a chair, you gesture towards the door. The second half of the word leaves the body behind: a gesture is any small act that stands for a feeling, so flowers after an argument are a nice gesture, and a day's takings given to the food bank is a gesture of goodwill. Then there is the sour version, which you will meet in the news. An empty gesture looks generous and changes nothing, and that is the phrase English reaches for whenever an announcement arrives too small and too late.
1noungestureA movement of the hands, head or arms that carries a meaning.~74%
“He made a small gesture towards the door.”
2nountokenAn act done to show what you feel, rather than to change much.~20%
“Sending flowers was a kind gesture.”
synonyms: token
3verbmoveTo move your hand or head to point something out or ask for something.~6%
“She gestured at the seat beside her.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 172 sentences found in the wild and placed 168 of them on a sense (4 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
gesture is a signal made with the body.
Latin gerō meant to carry, and also to carry yourself — to behave. Medieval Latin built gestūra on it for a mode of action: the way a person moves and holds themselves in front of other people. A gesture was your whole bearing long before it shrank to what the hands are doing.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eǵ-
Latin
gerō — to bear; (reflexive) bear oneself, behave, act
Medieval Latin
gestūra — a mode of action
English, today
gesture
From Medieval Latin gestūra (“a mode of action”), from Latin gerō (“to bear; (reflexive) bear oneself, behave, act”), past participle gestus. by surface analysis, gest- + -ure.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA