English usage and grammar

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A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.

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Cambridge English Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus
Gilman's Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. This is a great and witty reference about usage, its history, and its controveries

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How do you call the words a speaker uses when he is nervous, like "um", "ah", "like"? (self.english)

submitted 1 year ago by MrRobot to c/[email protected]

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In my native language there's a word for that kind of words, but I'm not sure how they are called in english.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Filler words is the most correct answer because words like "like" do actually have meaning, but there is also something called embololalia (also spelled embolalia), the insertion of meaningless sounds/words into speech, which would include "uh, ah, mmm," etc.