filler

(noun)

A sound or word that is spoken in conversation by one participant to signal to others that he/she has paused to think but is not yet finished speaking.

Related Terms

Examples of filler in the following topics:

  • Pauses

    • A speaker may use pauses to enhance the message delivery; a speaker may also user filler words and pauses that distract from the message.
    • Different languages have different characteristic filler sounds.
    • The most common filler sounds in English are: uh /ə/, er /ɚ/, and um /əm/.
    • Today's youth uses other fillers.
    • Record a conversation and count the use of unnecessary pauses and filler words in relation to the other words in the speech.

  • Illegal Price Advertising

    • Some products are sold with fillers, which increase the legal weight of the product with something that costs the producer very little compared to what the consumer thinks that he or she is buying.
    • Malt and cocoa butter have been used as filler in peanut butter.

  • Metalwork

    • Welding is the process of melting the workpieces and adding a filler material to form a pool of molten material that cools to become a strong joint, but sometimes pressure is used in conjunction with heat, or by itself, to produce the weld.
    • Brazing is a joining process in which a filler metal is melted and drawn into a capillary formed by the assembly of two or more work pieces.

  • Vascular Tissue: Xylem and Phloem

    • The tissue consists of vessel elements, conducting cells, known as tracheids, and supportive filler tissue, called parenchyma .

  • Dry Media

    • The most common pencil is the graphite pencil, but some other types include the charcoal pencil, which is made of charcoal and provide fuller blacks than graphite; and the carbon pencil, which is generally made of a mixture of clay and lamp black; colored pencils, which have wax-like cores with pigment and other fillers and available in all colors; and watercolor pencils, which are designed for use with watercolor techniques.
    • White chalk may be used as a filler in producing pale and bright hues with greater luminosity.

  • Watercolor

    • The medium is well suited to small format paintings and has a luminous quality due to its relative transparency and the absence of fillers obscuring the pigments .

  • The Sentence

    • The inner voices are secondary and serve largely as harmonic "filler. " All principles of good basso continuo voice-leading hold for melodic keyboard-style writing.

  • Transitions, Signal Phrases, and Pointing Words

    • Overusing transition words, or using them as filler, is distracting to the reader.