Buy from Amazon.co.ukWHEN China sent swift condolences to Pakistan after the slaughter of over 130 schoolchildren in a terror attack in Peshawar last month, it was more than a perfunctory gesture.
But, instead of disposing of it in a perfunctory gesture, he made it the basis of his address, devoting the first half of the speech to what he called the challenge of "reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly".
There's nothing wrong with sending apology texts, or using technology to connect with those far away, but for many the High Holidays tradition of apologizing to those we have wronged has largely become a perfunctory gesture and that's a shame.
Apart from the most perfunctory of gestures in the general direction of pear, it doesn't taste or smell of much at all.
With the gesture completed, the master put on his glasses, checked the watch beside him and saw that an hour had passed, gave what could be called a perfunctory final gesture, and was finished.
As such, Instagram's policies might come off as more a perfunctory PR gesture (and a cover-your-ass move) than a committed strategy to police graphic content, though admittedly the problem feels like an unstoppable plague.
After a perfunctory hug, he gestured upstage--or, rather, to a spot between the opened glass lobby door and the inner box office window--and said "Do you know Neil?" There, standing alone in the crowd, looking pale and ashen, was the man they used to call Doc Simon.
The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that "token" has meant "pro forma; (purely) symbolic; constituting a gesture (only); minimal, nominal, perfunctory" since about 1915, which is when the syllabus of modern English literature began to be consolidated in British and American universities.
Restless gestures and shifting patterns were at once perfunctory and decisive.
It was a fine gesture and beautifully executed, though — shorn of its sectional repeats — the piece sounded a bit more perfunctory than it needed to be in a relatively short program.
