A list of 22 words by betsyshane.
- obviously appears on 14 other lists
- like appears on 62 other lists
- um appears on 23 other lists
- basically appears on 22 other lists
- you know appears on 8 other lists
- sort of appears on 7 other lists
- well appears on 49 other lists
- kind of appears on 2 other lists
- maybe appears on 25 other lists
- right appears on 45 other lists
- probably appears on 11 other lists
- possibly appears on 8 other lists
- totally appears on 22 other lists
- interesting appears on 38 other lists
- er appears on 12 other lists
- definitely appears on 28 other lists
- ja ja appears on just this list
- oder appears on 1 other list
- so appears on 45 other lists
- you see appears on 2 other lists
- of course appears on 9 other lists
- naturally appears on 13 other lists
croptilldawn I was watching Huell Houser last night and he was interviewing the current owner(he inherited it) of Yiroshima restaurant in LA.
OMG I could have made a drinking game with just the number of times this dork said "what have you" and "so forth" I find those to be lame filler words when the person does not know what the heck they are talking about.
Just a side note their is Huell Houser drinking game. Jun 18, 2008
johnmperry My most unfavourite word: fantastic - seems to mean "desperately ordinary". Jun 17, 2008
colleen Hmm. Where you lose me is at the assessment "stupid people." A number of phenomenally intelligent people are terrible at verbal communication. Oct 7, 2007
betsyshane yes, but you're using them because you're just vocalizing while you're trying to think of the rest of the sentence that you started saying before planning out what you were going to say. Dec 6, 2006
kad There have been studies that show that your brain is very active when you're using hesitation words (such as "um"), so they're actually an important part of verbalization. "Kind of" and "sort of" seem like they'd be the opposite to me -- your brain shutting off, giving up on being articulate, and filling in the gap. Just a theory. Dec 6, 2006
javaexpert confirming a thought with the one you are conversing... very popular among europeans. Dec 6, 2006
abbandono I have far more patience for "um" than for most of these others. I like hesitation words. They occur universally, but with so many charming deviations in each language. I particularly like the Japanese "Ehhhhhhhhh-toooooooooooo" and the French "Euhhhhhhhh".
Granted, they are a mite selfish, since their implied meaning is "I need time to think, but I don't want to leave a silence in which you might interrupt my train of thought," but I consider it an acceptable form of selfishness.
On the other hand "kind of" and "sort of" are falsely self-deprecating, and annoy me deeply. Like, really deeply. ;-) Dec 4, 2006