Word.ws English Dictionary

umlessness

umlessness noun: the avoidance of the hesitating interjection um in speech.

Noun

umlessness (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The avoidance of the hesitating interjection um in speech.
    • “People began to prefer umlessness in public speaking and conversation around the same time that they began to value order, organization, planning and efficiency in an increasingly complex and urbanizing society,” he writes.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
    • Yet umlessness was taught as the norm for private and intimate spheres of life.2007, Michael Erard, Um... slips, stumbles, and verbal blunders, and what they mean

Origin of umlessness

From um + -less + -ness.

Questions about umlessness

What does umlessness mean?
Umlessness means the avoidance of the hesitating interjection um in speech.
What part of speech is umlessness?
Umlessness is a noun.

Words near umlessness in the dictionary

  1. umlauted
  2. umlauting
  3. umlautless
  4. umlautlessness
  5. umlauts
  6. umlessness
  7. Umling
  8. UMLS
  9. umlungu
  10. umlungus
  11. umm

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: umlessness (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-umlessness.wav.

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