disfluency means lack of fluency in speech; any of various breaks, irregularities, and non-lexical vocables that occur within otherwise fluent speech. It carries an Arena rating of 1391, earned across 61 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, disfluency ranks #1,092 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #3,683 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #3,889 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #6,125 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
disfluency is pronounced /ˈdɪsflʊənsi/.
Why “disfluency” is a great word
DISFLUENCY — [Noun] A lack of fluency in speech, manifesting as breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical sounds within otherwise fluent speech. From the English prefix *dis-* (expressing negation or reversal) + *fluency* (from Latin *fluentia*, "a flowing"). Unlike "stuttering," which denotes a specific clinical speech disorder, or "eloquence," which describes a polished rhetorical ideal, disfluency is the neutral, universal evidence of the mind outpacing the mouth. It is the hesitant "um" bridging a synaptic gap, the repeated "I, I, I" of feeling wrestling into a linear sentence, or the sudden silence when language falls a half-step behind cognition—the audible friction of the human engine at work.
Etymology
From dis- + fluency.
noun
- Lack of fluency in speech; any of various breaks, irregularities, and non-lexical vocables that occur within otherwise fluent speech.e.g.“To the long list of everyday afflictions that includes dry, itchy skin and restless leg syndrome, add another: speech disfluency.” — 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:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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