Catch-22 vocabulary

Then his eyes narrowed, and he started muttering and weaving his spatulate fingers in complicated patterns.

Dangerous Women - original fiction: Jim Butcher. Bombshells (2013)

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With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine.

H.G. Wells. The War of the Worlds (1898)