uh

See also: Appendix:Variations of "uh"

English

Etymology 1

Onomatopoeia of the natural expression of thought. Compare with er.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /ʌː/, /ə/
• Rhymes: -ʌ

Interjection

uh

1. Expression of thought, confusion, or uncertainty.

   Uh, who was that?

2. Expression of discomfort or reservation; a hesitation preceding awkward information or innuendo.

   He's receiving some, uh, special attention from the manager.

3. Space filler or pause during conversation.

   Uh, let me see...

   • 2007 August 24, William Grimes, “Uh, Lead My Rips: No More Bloopers”, in The New York Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 4 January 2013:

     As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er.

   • 2024 June 24, “Baldwin Judge on FIRE!”, in Law of Self Defense‎^[2], page 1:

     And the very highly paid legal defense team for Alec Baldwin, uh basically Manhattan lawyers from uh Emmanuel Quinn, a top 50 worldwide law firm, highly paid.

Usage notes

• May be extended by repeating the letter u or h to express increasingly severe confusion:

Uuuuh / Uhhhh, right, that makes sense, I guess.

Related terms

• huh-uh
• nuh-uh
• uh-huh
• uhoh
• uh-uh
• unh-uh
• yuh-uh

Translations

expression of confusion or uncertainty

• Catalan: eh (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 呃 (zh) (è, e)

• Danish: øh, øm, øhm
• Finnish: ööh
• French: euh (fr)
• German: äh (de)
• Italian: uh, boh (it)
• Japanese: あのう (ja) (anō), ええと (ēto), え (ja) (e), うーん (ūn)
• Korean: 저어 (ko) (jeo'eo)
• Malay: err (ms)
• Norwegian: eh, øh
• Portuguese: hã
• Romanian: ă (ro)
• Russian: гм (ru) (gm), гм (ru) (hm), хм (ru) (xm) (the actual pronunciation may not be close to the spelling)
• Spanish: eh (es)
• Swedish: eh, öh (sv), va (sv)
• Tagalog: ah, eh

space filler or pause during conversation

• Bulgarian: ъъ (ăă)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 呃 (zh) (è, e), 啊 (zh) (ā), 那個 / 那个 (zh) (nàge, nèige), 這個 / 这个 (zh) (zhège, zhèige)

• Danish: øh, øm
• Dutch: euhm (nl), euh (nl)
• Finnish: ööh, tuota (fi)
• French: euh (fr)
• German: äh (de)
• Greek: ε (el) (e)
• Hungarian: ő (hu)
• Italian: uh
• Japanese: あのう (ja) (anō), ええと (ēto), えー (ē), うーん (ūn)
• Korean: 어 (ko) (eo), 저어 (ko) (jeo'eo)
• Malay: err (ms)
• Navajo: éiyá
• Norwegian: eh, øh
• Portuguese: hã, é (pt)
• Russian: э-э-э (ru) (e-e-e), э-э (ru) (e-e), ну (ru) (nu)
• Serbo-Croatian: ovaj
• Spanish: eh (es), este (es)
• Swedish: eh, öh (sv)
• Tagalog: ah, eh
• Vietnamese: ờ (vi)

See also

• er
• erm
• um
• uh-oh
• oh

Noun

uh (plural uhs)

1. An occurrence of the interjection "uh".
   • 2007 August 24, William Grimes, “Uh, Lead My Rips: No More Bloopers”, in The New York Times‎^[3], archived from the original on 4 January 2013:

     Although Shakespeare refers to “hums and ha’s,” sifting through etiquette manuals and public-speaking guides turns up scant evidence of a prohibition against ums, ers and uhs, which are profuse in the first recording of Thomas Edison’s voice, in 1888. Mr. Erard, rather ingeniously, traces the prohibition on um and other speech flaws to the advent of radio in the early 1920s.

Etymology 2

Article

uh

1. (colloquial) Pronunciation spelling of a

   Gimme uh dollar.

Etymology 3

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʌ/

Noun

uh

1. (music, informal) Alternative form of a (“The fourth semiquaver (sixteenth note) of a beat”).

Anagrams

• HU, Hu, hu

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Interjection

uh

1. er, uh

   Synonyms: eh, ehm, um

Epigraphic Mayan

Noun

uh

1. (astronomy) moon

Juǀ'hoan

Pronunciation

• The murmured vowel IPA^(key): /ṳ/

Letter

uh (upper case Uh)

1. A letter of the Juǀ'hoan alphabet, written in the Latin script.

Romanian

Interjection

uh

1. obsolete form of uf

References

• uh in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN

Ske

Noun

uh

1. rain

References

• Darrell T. Tryon, New Hebrides languages: an internal classification (1976)

Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /u/, /uː/
• Homophone: u

Interjection

uh

1. used to express disappointment or disdain

Further reading

• “uh”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

Sumerian

Romanization

uh

1. romanization of 𒄴 (uḫ)

Yucatec Maya

Noun

uh

1. obsolete spelling of uj