“The difficulty disappears if we assume the root tib or dib to have been originally the phonetic equivalent of a gesture expressive of the notion of covering as well as of that of measuring.  This gesture would seem to be the holding of one hand above the other, horizontally, at some distance, palms opposite or both downwards.  This, or some similar gesture would most naturally accompany the above terms.  As for tibik, night, compare (Dunbar):  ’The two hands open and extended, crossing one another horizontally.’  The idea of covering evidently enters into this conception.  The strange adverb tibi (’I don’t know where,’ &c., or ’in a place unknown to me’), if derived from the same root, would originally signify ‘covered.’  In titibisse, or didibisse (it rolls, it turns), the reduplication of the radical syllable indicates the repetition of the gesture, by holding the hands alternately above one another, palms downwards, and thus producing a rotary motion.

“In German, the clasping of the hands in a horizontal position, expressive of a promise or the conclusion of a bargain, is frequently accompanied by the interjection top! the same radical consonants as in tib.  Compare also the English tap, the French tape, the Greek, [Greek:  tupto] the Sanscrit tup and tub, &c.”

GESTURES CONNECTED WITH THE ORIGIN OF WRITING.

Though written characters are generally associated with speech, they are shown, by successful employment in hieroglyphs and by educated deaf-mutes to be representative of ideas without the intervention of sounds, and so also are the outlines of signs.  This will be more apparent if the motions expressing the most prominent feature, attribute, or function of an object are made, or supposed to be made, so as to leave a luminous track impressible upon the eye separate from the members producing it.  The actual result is an immateriate graphic representation of visible objects and qualities which, invested with substance, has become familiar to us as the rebus, and also appears in the form of heraldic blazonry styled punning or “canting.”

Gesture language is, in fact, not only a picture language, but is actual writing, though dissolving and sympathetic, and neither alphabetic nor phonetic.

Dalgarno aptly says:  “Qui enim caput nutat, oculo connivet, digitum movet in aere, &c., (ad mentis cogitata exprimendum); is non minus vere scribit, quam qui Literas pingit in Charta, Marmore, vel aere.”