Other forms: stammering, stammers, stammered
To stammer is to speak with repeated sounds and difficult pauses. The word will not come, and everybody waits.
It is a speech condition rather than a habit, affecting about one person in a hundred, and it has nothing to do with intelligence or nerves, though stress makes it worse. British English says stammer and American English usually says stutter, and they mean the same thing. The word is also used loosely for a single moment of hesitation under pressure. The noun is a stammer, and the person has one rather than being one.
1verbstammerTo speak with involuntary repetitions and pauses.
“He stammered slightly over the first word.”
2nounconditionA speech condition of this kind.
“She has had a stammer since childhood.”
Also accepted in games: stutter
Proto-Germanic
*stamrōną — to stammer
Proto-West Germanic
*stamrōn
Old English
stamerian
Middle English
stameren
English, today
stammer
From Middle English stameren, from Old English stamerian, from Proto-West Germanic stamrōn, from Proto-Germanic stamrōną (“to stammer”). Compare German stammeln, Dutch stameren, Old Norse stammr. a doublet of stumble.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Speaking
First appears in chapter 25 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word