hem¹

(hĕm)

1. An edge or border on a piece of cloth, especially a finished edge, as for a garment or curtain, made by folding an edge under and stitching it down.

2. The height or level of the bottom edge of a skirt, dress, or coat; a hemline.

tr.v. hemmed, hem·ming, hems

1. To fold back and stitch down the edge of.

2. To surround and shut in; enclose: a valley hemmed in by mountains. See Synonyms at enclose.

[Middle English, from Old English hem, hemm.]

hem′mer n.

hem²

(hĕm)

A short cough or clearing of the throat made especially to gain attention, warn another, hide embarrassment, or fill a pause in speech.

intr.v. hemmed, hem·ming, hems

1. To utter a hem.

2. To hesitate in speech.

Idiom:

hem and haw

To be hesitant and indecisive; equivocate: "a leader who cannot make up his or her mind, never knows what to do, hems and haws" (Margaret Thatcher).

[From Middle English heminge, coughing, of imitative origin.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Verb

hem and haw - utter `hems' and `haws'; indicated hesitation; "He hemmed and hawed when asked to address the crowd"

pause, hesitate - interrupt temporarily an activity before continuing; "The speaker paused"

References in periodicals archive

Tell the Google Assistant to book a table for four at 6:00 pm, it tends to the phone call in a human-sounding voice complete with "speech disfluencies" such as "ums" and "uhs."

Human-sounding Google Assistant sparks ethics questions

Electrophysiological evidences have reinforced the hypothesis that stuttering is associated with a deficit in the modulation of the cortical auditory system during speech planning and that this may contribute to inefficient monitoring of auditory feedback and, consequently, result in speech disfluencies [11].

Immediate effect of delayed auditory feedback on stuttering-like disfluencies

They are also the most frequent speech disfluencies; filled pauses occur more often than any other speech disfluencies (repetitions, word truncations, etc.) [6], signalling not only of breaks in speech production process, but also of explication of this process [5].

Experiments on Detection of Voiced Hesitations in Russian Spontaneous Speech

Omit minor speech disfluencies, ambient sounds, and recording stops.

Introduction to "difficulties in learning to apply general semantics"

Spontaneous spoken discourse has traditionally been approached through discourse analysis, and through comprehension studies that have focused on the processing of speech disfluencies and prosodic cues.

The role of connectives in the comprehension of spontaneous spoken discourse

Results supported the hypothesis that speech disfluencies would decrease as the meaningfulness of the fluent speaker role increased across the course of treatment.

8 Talking back to stuttering: constructivist contributions to stuttering treatment

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