mmm.

n.  an affirmative answer.

<“Everyone all right? Tommy all right?”  “Mmm.”  Joe nodded, then closed his eyes again.  —Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.>

n.  an artfully ambiguous response.

<It is only a butler of experience who can manage three M’s together, without any interjacent vowels.  —Lewis Carroll, Sayings of Lewis Carroll.>

n.  pleasure.

<I made some mmm’s of pleasure and they laughed again, free to love the coffee they had both been craving.  —Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli.>

n.  the blissful feeling of a cigarette smoker who has satisfied the craving for a puff.

<[N]ow he could go on drawing in smoke until his lips were scorched.  Mmm.  The smoke crept and flowed through his whole hungry body, making his head and feet respond to it.  —Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.>

n.  the sound of the letter m, as described by Amanda Sahdi (quoted in “The Sound of Joy: Cochlear Implants Introduce Deaf Babies to the World of Hearing” by Jordan Lite, New York Daily News); see also mmmm.

mmm mmm.

n.  an unintelligible statement, as from a mouth covered by a hand.

<“Mmm, mmm” Trina said urgently into my palm.  But I had her in a grip of iron.  —Meg Cabot, Teen Idol.>

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