Nuts and Bolts: embolalia.

Embolalia is a posh name for all the words we say that aren't even pretending to mean anything.

They're sometimes called vocal fillers, but that makes them sound easy (which they are, but, hey, let's make the most of what abilities we have).

I could give you examples of embolalia but that would just be annoying. They're words like um or hmm; or sometimes they're words which can mean things, like like; or even phrases like you know. They're the words that are thrown in to keep things moving while our brains catch up.

This is not to say that such words are unnecessary to the trained tongue. If the reply to the question is this dress too young for me? is um, no, then everyone knows that the answer counts as a probable yes.

Given that this is the case, though, I'm not sure it's a true case of embolalia.

Thing To Watch Out For Today: embolalia. This word is made up of two Greek words. Embolos means something thrown in, and lalia means chat.