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. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement. "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').

3. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like foo.

4. When used as a question ("Mumble?") means "I didn't understand you".

5. 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."