Turning them off had been a purely symbolic gesture, designed to encourage the evacuation.

The other three, in a purely symbolic gesture, went to Barack Obama.

"It's a purely symbolic gesture," said Allan Cox, an executive consultant in Chicago.

Thus, he claims IBM's act of tearing up its price list was a purely symbolic gesture, simply an attempt to keep the same situation going.

It was a purely symbolic gesture, since the cup made it barely halfway across the intersection, but it drew cheers from the group all the same.

It repealed the November Nullification Ordinance and also, "in a purely symbolic gesture", nullified the Force Bill.

Napoléon I presented the Petit Trianon to his mother, Letizia Buonaparte - a purely symbolic gesture as she never lived there.

It was neither a purely symbolic gesture, nor a sacrifice: as new Member States, it was in fact entirely in our interests for a budget to be adopted for that period.

But she waved away any talk of the campaign as a purely symbolic gesture, saying, "We are sure that if we could talk to 34 million people individually, then we would have our $34 million."

But it just might happen--we're not promising , you understand--that some winners of these contests get a token of trivial value as a purely symbolic gesture of thanks for their participation in a contest with no prize.

I am astonished at the proposals for customs officers to wear the European Union emblem on their uniforms and for the creation of a single Community customs service, which are purely symbolic gestures amounting to nothing more than window-dressing.

Barring Times newsroom employees (except for those writing about the automotive industry) from eligibility for these supplier discounts would be a purely symbolic gesture, but one without any meaningful significance whatsoever, because there is no conflict of interest, real or apparent, as I see it.

Yet the competition rages on, ranging from purely symbolic gestures, such as the policy of West German television of including East German cities in its news roundup, to the deadly serious, represented by the Berlin wall, whose construction Mr. Honecker supervised in 1961 as the East German security chief.