Why did the writer of the article use “waft”?

[rezaaa]

“The dismissive wafts of the hand at every goal conceded suggest he is chafing against Solskjær.” https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-a-clue-what-they-are-doing-solskjaer-ronaldo. I checked a few dictionaries, but I didn’t find any sense of the word “waft” that would mean a waving movement. Furthermore, the use of the word sounds awkward to me.

 

[Tarheel]

Is he letting balls in the goal and then waving at them?

 

[probus]

My guess would be that waft is used figuratively here to represent the tiny breeze that his dismissive gesture would create. Substitution of the effect for the cause is a figure of speech that goes back to ancient Greek, but I can't recall the Greek word for it. It is a bit like "I dropped the stupid hammer on my toe." It isn't the hammer that is stupid.

 

[emsr2d2]

As far as I can tell, every time a goal is scored against Man Utd (and at the moment that's happening a lot!), Ronaldo does a sort of dismissive waft with this hand in the air, potentially directed at Solskjær. If someone did that to me, I would take it as a way of something like "Pfft. Again. This is rubbish" and the suggestion would be that it was somehow my fault.

Tarheel, he (Ronaldo) isn't letting in goals. He's not a goalkeeper - he's a striker (a forward).

 

[jutfrank]

Look at the definition given by Cambridge, paying attention to the part I've bolded in brackets: to (cause to) move gently through the air

Ronaldo, as the 'causer' of the action, was dismissively waving his hand as you would if you were trying to get a bad smell to go away.