Word.ws English Dictionary

covert stuttering

covert stuttering noun: a manner of speaking in which a person who stutters is careful to avoid words, sounds, and other stimuli which trigger instances of stuttering.

Noun

covert stuttering (uncountable)

  1. A manner of speaking in which a person who stutters is careful to avoid words, sounds, and other stimuli which trigger instances of stuttering.
    • Covert stuttering is characterized by accessory features such as word substitutions, interjections, and stopping.1991, Kerry E. Lewis, “The Structure of Disfluency Behaviors in the Speech of Adult Stutterers,”, in Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, volume 34, page 482
    • [C]overt stuttering, also known as interiorized stuttering . . . may include avoidance of words or sounds, certain situations, certain people, and so on.2006, David Ward, Stuttering & Cluttering, →ISBN, page 271

Examples of covert stuttering in a sentence

  • Another mistaken impression is that covert stuttering is just a mild form of stuttering.2006, Dale F. Williams, Stuttering Recovery: Personal and Empirical Perspectives, →ISBN, page 151:
  • Though this form of stuttering is a well-recognized clinical phenomenon, research on the topic of covert stuttering is insignificant (Boodstein and Berstein Ratner, 2008).2011, Jill E. Douglas, An Investigation of the Transition Process from Covert Stuttering to Overt Stuttering: An Interpretive...

Synonyms of covert stuttering

Forms of covert stuttering

alternative formcovert stutter

Questions about covert stuttering

What does covert stuttering mean?
Covert stuttering means a manner of speaking in which a person who stutters is careful to avoid words, sounds, and other stimuli which trigger instances of stuttering.
How do you use covert stuttering in a sentence?
Another mistaken impression is that covert stuttering is just a mild form of stuttering.
What part of speech is covert stuttering?
Covert stuttering is a noun.

Words near covert stuttering in the dictionary

  1. covert hacks
  2. covert hound
  3. covert hounds
  4. covert prestige
  5. covert stutter
  6. covert stuttering
  7. covert stutters
  8. covert-coat
  9. covert-coating
  10. covert-coatings
  11. covert-coats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: covert stuttering (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “covert stuttering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/covert_stuttering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.