Lately, much to my annoyance, I've encountered many examples of this kind of sentence: "Customers like their hamburgers to taste like, well, hamburgers." "The album `The Allman Brother's Band' by, um, the Allman Brothers is one of my favorites." "Dorothy has red shoes, a dog named Toto, and is from, wait for it, Kansas." My questions: is there a name for the "well" "um" and the "wait for it" in these sentences? Is there a literary term for this sort of thing? Am I wrong that this is a growing trend?
posted by pasici on Aug 19, 2006 - 41 answers