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mumble

 - 4 dictionary results

mum⋅ble

  [muhm-buhl] verb, -bled, -bling, noun
Use mumble in a Sentence
–verb (used without object)
1. to speak in a low indistinct manner, almost to an unintelligible extent; mutter.
2. to chew ineffectively, as from loss of teeth: to mumble on a crust.
–verb (used with object)
3. to say or utter indistinctly, as with partly closed lips: He mumbled something about expenses.
4. to chew, or try to eat, with difficulty, as from loss of teeth.
–noun
5. a low, indistinct utterance or sound.
Origin:
1275–1325; ME momelen, equiv. to mom(me) mum 1 + -elen -le; cf. D mommelen, G mummeln

Related forms:
mumbler, noun
mum⋅bling⋅ly, adverb

Synonyms:
1, 3. See murmur.

Antonyms:
1. articulate.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To mumble
mum·ble   (mŭm'bəl)   
v.   mum·bled, mum·bling, mum·bles

v.   tr.

  1. To utter indistinctly by lowering the voice or partially closing the mouth: mumbled an insincere apology.

  2. To chew slowly or ineffectively without or as if without teeth.

v.   intr.

  1. To speak words indistinctly, as by lowering the voice or partially closing the mouth.

  2. To chew food slowly or ineffectively, as if with the gums.

n.  A low indistinct sound or utterance.

[Middle English momelen, from Middle Dutch mommelen.]
mum'bler n., mum'bly adj.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

mumble 
c.1325, momelen, "to eat in a slow, ineffective manner," probably freq. of mum (interj.). The -b- is excrescent. Meaning "to speak indistinctly" is from 1362. The noun is first attested 1902.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Computing Dictionary

mumble
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. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like foo.
3. 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."
4. 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.
5. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further discussion would be fruitless.
(1997-03-27)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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