Today’s podictionary word brought to you by GoToMeeting. Try it free for 30 days by following the link www.gotomeeting.com/podcast [audio clip of Mark Jaquith asking for gesticulate] Mark also has a word oriented blog.  It’s called wordsplosion.com and he invites people to submit pictures of spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in public signs and the like.  It’s a lot of fun. Today is Halloween.  Tonight the streets will be filled with little ghosts and goblins, Hanna Montannas and Dark Knights.  Many will be gesticulating in their excitement—that means waving their arms around—and all, I hope, will be lugging sacks of goodies. For the purposes of today’s word it’s appropriate that they’ll be carrying bags of candy because the root of gesticulate has to do with carrying. In fact when a woman is pregnant and is carrying a baby the reason we talk about nine months of gestation is that this word too—gestation—comes from the same Latin root and nine months of gestation literally means nine months of carrying. The kids on the street with their bags of loot will be gesturing to each other and gesture too is a related word. But to us gesticulate and gesture have a greater sense of movement than of load bearing.  This is because the meaning has changed over time.  The original Latin meaning of carrying something also extended to how you carried yourself and how you behaved.  The original meaning of gesture in English referred to posture and deportment. It was only with time that the word describing the general movement of your body got transferred to the specific movements of your body. A court jester was more likely to gesticulate than a knight and appropriately enough the title jester comes from the same Latin root. But knights do come into it too.  The first citation for the word gesture , when it meant posture and deportment, appeared in an old document from the early 1400s that I’ve not talked about before.  It’s known as Sir Cleges . This is the tale of a knight with an appropriately trick-or-treat theme about it. Not only was Sir Cleges said to be of good gesture, meaning he carried himself nobly, he was generous to a fault.  Just like householders giving out candy tonight, 600 years ago Sir Cleges gave and gave and gave.  Until he had nothing left to give and was reduced to poverty. Lucky for him a miracle happened and in the midst of winter a cherry tree in his yard was found to be full of fresh ripe fruit. He wanted to tell the king of this wonderful event but all the guards and keepers of the castle wouldn’t let him in unless he split with them the reward he expected to get from the king. When he did tell the king the king was so amazed and pleased with the winter cherries that he asked what Sir Cleges wanted as a reward.  Sir Cleges asked to be whipped with 12 lashes and gladly shared this reward with the guards who’d extorted him. The king and his courtiers thought it a great trick and now figuring out how Sir Cleges had been so generous in days gone by, gave him a more satisfying reward. Less