Pronunciations (2)
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/ɜː/
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/ɜɹ/
Pronunciation notes
- US
Interjection
Said when hesitating in speech.
Usage- Informal
- Examples
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“Er...Feathered Omen, hoot not,” he continued uneasily, “Son of Tanit, hoot not!”
More examples (1)
As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er.
If he—er—disappears—well, it seems to me that we'd both benefit.
More examples (1)
Liquid Samurai: 'FORMLESS AND INFINITE ARE WE, THE LIQUID SAMURAI. I SERVE MY QUEEN, AS WE HAVE FOR COUNTLESS--' / Mona: 'HEY, I DON'T MEAN TO INTERRUPT, BUT YOU SEEM LIKE YOU'RE MADE OF POWERFUL STUFF. CAN I, ER, STUDY YOU?'
Verb
To utter the word er when hesitating in speech.
Usage- Informal
- Intransitive
- Transitive
- Synonyms
- Examples
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um and er
He ummed and erred his way through the presentation.
Noun
An occurrence of the interjection "er".
- Examples
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More examples (1)
Although Shakespeare refers to “hums and ha’s,” sifting through etiquette manuals and public-speaking guides turns up scant evidence of a prohibition against ums, ers and uhs, which are profuse in the first recording of Thomas Edison’s voice, in 1888. Mr. Erard, rather ingeniously, traces the prohibition on um and other speech flaws to the advent of radio in the early 1920s.
Noun
The name of the Cyrillic script letter Р / р.