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