non-verbal

• nonverbal

non- +‎ verbal

• enPR: nŏn-vûrʹ-bəl, IPA^(key): /ˌnɒn.ˈvɜɹ.bəl/
  • (UK) IPA^(key): [ˌnɒn.ˈvɜː.bəɫ]
  • (US) IPA^(key): [ˌnɑn.ˈvɜ˞.bəɫ]
• Rhymes: -ɜː(r)bəl
• Hyphenation: non‧ver‧bal

non-verbal (not comparable)

1. (of communication) in a form other than written or spoken words, such as gestures, facial expressions or body language.
2. (grammar, somewhat rare) of or relating to a word that belongs to any part of speech other than that of verbs
   • 1991, Bernard Comrie, “On the Importance of Arabic to General Linguistic Theory”, in Bernard Comrie and Mushira Eid (editors), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics III: Papers from the Third Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 15:

     In the Moroccan dialect of Meknès, verbal negation is by means of the circumfix ma...-š, as in (15), while nonverbal negation is primarily by means of invariable ma-ši before the nonverbal predicate, as in (16).

   • 2009, Anna Pazelskaya, "Three Kinds of Event Nominal Negation in Russian", in Peter Bosch, David Gabelaia, and Jérôme Lang (editors), Logic, Language, and Computation: 7th International Tbilisi Symposium, Springer, →ISBN, page 25:

     Negative prefix in Russian is a distinctive feature of nonverbal parts of speech, namesly, nouns (even those that do not denote situations, e.g. 3a), adjectives (3b), and adverbs (3c): […]

3. (pathology) Unable to speak.

• verbal

non-verbal (plural non-verbals)

1. A sound, gesture, etc. that is not a word.