Definition of "fingerspelling" []

• Communication by means of a manual alphabet. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In the 1960s, linguists began to understand that far from being mere pantomime or fingerspelling, ASL is a highly evolved language with a syntax entirely different from any spoken language.3"
• "People were kind, friendly, and patient, but I hated to impose my blank looks, my need for painfully slow fingerspelling, my ignorance of whole swaths of essential vocabulary."
• "Stokoe notation was created by William Stokoe for ASL in 1960, with Latin letters and numbers used for the shapes they have in fingerspelling, and iconic glyphs to transcribe the position, movement, and orientation of the hands."