Mouthing

noun, verb

noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of forming a shape with the mouth, especially as part of sign language.

    "Mouthings tend to occur most often when signers are manually articulating nouns, open-class items, and morphologically simpler signs (see Crasborn et al. 2008)."

  2. 2
    Ranting; passionate speech devoid of meaning.

    "Kearn did not rant, he did not deafen you with heroics and empty mouthings."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of mouth form-of, gerund, participle, present
  2. 2
    present participle and gerund of mouthe form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"Would you mind mouthing the words "good bye" as you leave the room?"

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.