In linguistics‏‎, a filler is a sound or word in speaking‏‎ used by someone to show that they haven’t finished speaking yet but are either forming their thoughts into speech or mentally searching for the right word‏.

Common fillers in English are:

• um – /um/
• er – /ə/

However, we can also use words (and sometimes phrases‏‎) which don’t add any meaning to what we say but give us time to think:

• well
• basically
• right
• like
• you know what I mean

The idea behind these fillers is to either allow the speaker to keep the conversation (i.e. if they did not make a sound the other person might begin speaking and take the conversation away from them) or to complete a conversation without actually making a meaningful statement.

The written equivalent of a filler is probably chewing your pencil.

In the video we see a humorous take on fillers and modern speech. Well worth a look if you have a few minutes free.