mumble

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verb

To speak or utter indistinctly, as by lowering the voice or partially closing the mouth: murmur, mutter, whisper. See sounds/pleasant sounds/unpleasant sounds/neutral sounds or silence.

noun

A low, indistinct, and often continuous sound: murmur, sigh, sough, susurration, susurrus, whisper. See sounds/pleasant sounds/unpleasant sounds/neutral sounds or silence.

v

Definition: say low and inarticulately
Antonyms: speak clearly

1. Said when the correct response is too complicated to enunciate, or the speaker has not thought it out. Often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance to get into a long discussion. “Don't you think that we could improve LISP performance by using a hybrid reference-count transaction garbage collector, if the cache is big enough and there are some extra cache bits for the microcode to use?” “Well, mumble ... I'll have to think about it.”

2. [MIT] Expression of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used as an informal vote of consensus in a meeting: “So, shall we dike out the COBOL emulation?” “Mumble!”

3. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement (distinguished from sense 2 by tone of voice and other cues). “I think we should buy a VAX.” “Mumble!” Common variant: mumble frotz (see frotz; interestingly, one does not say ‘mumble frobnitz’ even though ‘frotz’ is short for ‘frobnitz’).

4. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like foo.

5. When used as a question (“Mumble?”) means “I didn't understand you”.

6. Sometimes used in ‘public’ contexts on-line as a placefiller for things one is barred from giving details about. For example, a poster with pre-released hardware in his machine might say “Yup, my machine now has an extra 16M of memory, thanks to the card I'm testing for Mumbleco.”

7. A conversational wild card used to designate something one doesn't want to bother spelling out, but which can be glarked from context. Compare blurgle.

8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further discussion would be fruitless.

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For a list of words related to mumble, see:

• Intonation and Inflection - mumble: speak indistinctly

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See words rhyming with "mumbler."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Mumble.

Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - sige mumlende
v. intr. - mumle
n. - mumlen

Nederlands (Dutch)
mompelen, gemompel

Français (French)
v. tr. - marmonner
v. intr. - marmonner
n. - marmonnement

Deutsch (German)
n. - Nuscheln
v. - nuscheln, mummeln

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ασυνάρτητο) μουρμουρητό, ψέλλισμα, μπερδεμένα λόγια
v. - μουρμουρίζω (ασυνάρτητα), ψελλίζω, μασώ (τα λόγια μου)

Italiano (Italian)
borbottare, borbottio

Português (Portuguese)
n. - murmúrio (m)
v. - murmurar

Русский (Russian)
бормотать, шамкать, бормотание

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - hablar entre dientes, mascullar
v. intr. - hablar entre dientes, mascullar
n. - murmullo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - mummel
v. - mumla, mumsa

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
含糊地说, 咕哝着说, 抿着嘴嚼, 含糊地说话, 咕哝, 含糊的话, 咕噜

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 含糊地說, 咕噥著說, 抿著嘴嚼
v. intr. - 含糊地說話, 咕噥
n. - 含糊的話, 咕嚕

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 혼자말하다
v. intr. - 중얼중얼 말하다
n. - 작고 분명하지 않은 말

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - もぐもぐ言う, もぐもぐかむ
n. - もぐもぐ言うこと

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) همهمه, تمتمه (فعل) يهمهم, يتمتم, يلوك‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮מלמל, לעס (בפה חסר-שיניים)‬
v. intr. - ‮מלמל‬
n. - ‮מילה שנאמרה באופן לא ברור‬

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