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](../V/VAX.html).” “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.