Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To speak with involuntary pauses or repetitions.
- intransitive verb To utter with involuntary pauses or repetitions.
- noun A way of speaking characterized by involuntary pauses or repetitions.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Defective utterance; a stutter: as, to be troubled with a stammer. See
stammering . - To hesitate or falter in speaking; hence, to speak with involuntary breaks and pauses.
- To stumble or stagger.
- Synonyms Falter, Stammer, Stutter. He who falters weakens or breaks more or less completely in utterance; the act is occasional, not habitual, and for reasons that are primarily moral, belong to the occasion, and may be various. He who stammers has great difficulty in uttering anything; the act may be occasional or habitual; the cause is confusion, shyness, timidity, or actual fear; the result is broken and inarticulate sounds that seem to stick in the mouth, and sometimes complete suppression of voice. He who stutters makes sounds that are not what he desires to make; the act is almost always habitual, especially in its worst forms; the cause is often excitement; the result is a quick repetition of some one sound that is initial in a word that the person desires to utter, as c-c-c-c-catch.
- To utter or pronounce with hesitation or imperfectly; especially, to utter with involuntary breaks or catches: frequently with out.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Defective utterance, or involuntary interruption of utterance; a stutter.
- transitive verb To utter or pronounce with hesitation or imperfectly; -- sometimes with
out . - intransitive verb To make involuntary stops in uttering syllables or words; to hesitate or falter in speaking; to speak with stops and difficulty; to stutter.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To keep repeating a particular sound involuntarily.
- noun The involuntary repetition of a sound in speech.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb speak haltingly
- noun a speech disorder involving hesitations and involuntary repetitions of certain sounds
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Without even the pretext of a synoptic bridge, he concludes: The stammer was a way of telling the world that he was not like others, a way of expressing his singularity.
Knotted Tongues Benson Bobrick 1995
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Without even the pretext of a synoptic bridge, he concludes: The stammer was a way of telling the world that he was not like others, a way of expressing his singularity.
Knotted Tongues Benson Bobrick 1995
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The stammer was a surprise, and the sudden nervous flickering of long brown lashes that briefly veiled the lively eyes was the first sign of unease Cadfael had detected in him.
The Raven In The Foregate Peters, Ellis, 1913-1995 1986
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Probably the stammer is the effort of the young ones to sing.
John Keble's Parishes Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862
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Once, he believed that his stammer was a reaction to the furious fluency of his father, whose politics he abhorred, but now he tends to think it was a way of protecting himself against his own feelings of aggression.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
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Tom Hooper's account of George VI's struggle to beat his stammer was a hit with cinemagoers and critics - only academics pooh-poohed its historical accuracy.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Telegraph Staff 2011
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Once, he believed that his stammer was a reaction to the furious fluency of his father, whose politics he abhorred, but now he tends to think it was a way of protecting himself against his own feelings of aggression.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
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Once, he believed that his stammer was a reaction to the furious fluency of his father, whose politics he abhorred, but now he tends to think it was a way of protecting himself against his own feelings of aggression.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
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To say that a stammer is the cause of literary greatness would be a stretch.
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Leah McLaren 2010
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"The most enduring metaphor for me is that my stammer is a person," he said in an interview last year.
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Leah McLaren 2010
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