Word.ws English Dictionary

uh

/ʌː/

uh interjection: expression of thought, confusion, or uncertainty. Also the pronunciation spelling of a.

Interjection

  1. Expression of thought, confusion, or uncertainty.
    • Uh, who was that?
  2. Expression of discomfort or reservation; a hesitation preceding awkward information or innuendo.
    • He's receiving some, uh, special attention from the manager.
  3. Space filler or pause during conversation.
    • Uh, let me see...
    • As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er.2007 August 24, William Grimes, “Uh, Lead My Rips: No More Bloopers”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 04 Jan 2013

Noun

uh (plural uhs)

  1. An occurrence of the interjection "uh".
    • Although Shakespeare refers to “hums and ha’s,” sifting through etiquette manuals and public-speaking guides turns up scant evidence of a prohibition against ums, ers and uhs, which are profuse in the first recording of Thomas Edison’s voice, in 1888. Mr. Erard, rather ingeniously, traces the...2007 August 24, William Grimes, “Uh, Lead My Rips: No More Bloopers”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 04 Jan 2013

Also used as

uh is also the pronunciation spelling of a.

uh is also the alternative form of a (“The fourth semiquaver (sixteenth note) of a.

uh meaning in Tagalog, Malay and Vietnamese

uh in Tagalog

expression of confusion or uncertainty
ah, eh
space filler or pause during conversation
ah, eh

uh in Malay

expression of confusion or uncertainty
err
space filler or pause during conversation
err

uh in Vietnamese

space filler or pause during conversation
ờ

Examples of uh in a sentence

  • Uh, um, and well are common filled pauses among English speakers.
  • Uh oh. I gotta let one loose.
  • Wait, uh - I-I-I should go distract Caine so he doesn't l-listen in on this.

All 40 example sentences with uh

Forms of uh

pluraluhs

Origin of uh

Onomatopoeia of the natural expression of thought. Compare with er.

Phrases with uh

Words that rhyme with uh

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about uh

What does uh mean?
Uh means expression of thought, confusion, or uncertainty.
What is uh in Tagalog?
Uh in Tagalog is ah, eh. See Uh meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is uh?
Uh can be an interjection or a noun.
How do you pronounce uh?
Uh is pronounced /ʌː/.

Words near uh in the dictionary

  1. UGVs
  2. UGW
  3. Ugwu
  4. Ugwunagbo
  5. Ugwus
  6. uh
  7. uh huh
  8. uh oh
  9. uh uh
  10. uh-huh
  11. uh-oh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: uh (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-uh.ogg.

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