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 ed from context. Compare
blurgle. 8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further
discussion would be fruitless.

