um
/ʌm/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.13 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
2
Letters
1
Syllables
2
Unique Chars
Meaning
intj
Expression of hesitation, uncertainty or space filler in conversation.
intj
An expression to forcefully call attention to something wrong.
intj
An expression of shocked disapproval used by a child who witnesses forbidden behavior.
noun
An occurrence of the interjection "um".
particle
An undifferentiated determiner or article; a miscellaneous linking word, or filler with nonspecific meaning; representation of broken English stereotypically or comically attributed to Native Americans.
Dated; Humorous; Offensive
name
Initialism of University of Miami.
Example Sentences
- "Um, I don’t know."
- "Let’s see... um... how about this?"
- "It's a great test of the claims of open-source gurus, who say that a self-motivated community can outcode any team working for a single employer—like, um, Microsoft."
- "As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er."
- "Um And I don't know um what to say to the court other than, I don't know how we could get through 1/5 of that."
- ""About the same, wherever you go," he agreed. "Um," I said."
Etymology
Usage
- American usage
- Intransitive verb
- Dated
- Humorous
- Offensive