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."
3. 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."
4. A conversational wild card used to designate something one
doesn't want to bother spelling out, but which can be
5. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further
discussion would be fruitless.
(1997-03-27)