mumble
:mumble: interj. 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 glark
d from context. Compare
blurgle
8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further
discussion would be fruitless.
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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