![]() ![]() And before you complain about the degeneration of the language, keep in mind that this word has been in the dictionary since 1827. With repeated use, his filler words became part of his filler speech patterns.įormer. He was filling the void with noise so you’d continue to listen to him. Kennedy didn’t say “er argh um” between his sentences because it was funny (although it often is). Some of the most obvious abusers of filler words (and often filler expressions) are politicians. Here, filler is used to stave off commentary when you pause in your speach. However, news stations do fill your ears with filler words when pundits are debating. Filler words are used to buy time to think of what we’ll say next, but someone who’s memorized their lines doesn’t need time to invent their next sentence. Well, radio and television personalities are reading off of cue cards. ![]() How can the daily news filter so many out? Good actors, newscasters and radio personalities avoid using them. People point to these words to mock how slow-witted a person is. We try to remain vigilant on the Power to the Meeple Podcast and cut out what we can, but uhs and ums pour out our mouths despite our best intentions. All it takes is for one well known person to favor a particular sound, and, jinkies, new filler.įiller words are resilient buggers. It shows we don’t need hundreds of years of word morphing to create new filler word. I particularly like that someone pulled forward Ronald Reagan’s famous filler word “Well”. ![]() One look at the Filler (linguistics) page on Wikipedia should indicate how varied filler words are throughout the world. That means, before recording devices caught people in the act of speech disfluency, that words like ‘Er’, ‘Uh’ and ‘Um’ slowly morphed depending on the local dialect. Did you guys know that the word ‘Uh’ didn’t exist when you were a teenager? How did you stumble through asking your puppy love crush, Loraine Baines, to go out with you to The Under the Sea Enchantment Dance?Įr, Uh and Um are riddled throughout modern English speakers sentences, but often not recorded when transcribed. I probably have a few readers who were born during World War II. ‘Um’ dates back to 1672, ‘Er’ was added to the dictionary in 1862 and ‘Uh’ hit common usage in 1960. Also, ‘Er’ is preferred in the United Kingdom, while ‘Uh’ is preferred in the Americas, but that’s by no means a hard and fast rule. Since they fill the same role in our language, with mild flavor differences. While we’re at it, we might as well bring forward… A filler word used in speech, and a tricky word to research since Google wants to talk about the George Clooney vehicle ‘ ER‘. ![]()
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