1. Said when the correct response is too
complicated to enunciate, or the speaker has not thought it out.
Often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance
to get into a long discussion. "Don't you think that we could
improve LISP performance by using a hybrid reference-count
transaction garbage collector, if the cache is big enough and there
are some extra cache bits for the microcode to use?" "Well,
mumble ... I'll have to think about it." 2. [MIT] Expression
of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used as an informal vote
of consensus in a meeting: "So, shall we dike out the COBOL
emulation?" "Mumble!" 3. Sometimes used as an expression of
disagreement (distinguished from sense 2 by tone of voice and other
cues). "I think we should buy a VAX." "Mumble!" Common
variant: `mumble frotz' (see frotz; interestingly, one does
not say `mumble frobnitz' even though `frotz' is short for
`frobnitz'). 4. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like
foo. 5. When used as a question ("Mumble?") means "I
didn't understand you". 6. Sometimes used in `public' contexts
on-line as a placefiller for things one is barred from giving
details about. For example, a poster with pre-released hardware in
his machine might say "Yup, my machine now has an extra 16M of
memory, thanks to the card I'm testing for Mumbleco." 7. A
conversational wild card used to designate something one doesn't
want to bother spelling out, but which can be glarked from
context. Compare blurgle. 8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism
used to suggest that further discussion would be fruitless.
