nnnnnnn.

interj.  a sound to interrupt and drown out what someone else is saying.

<“We danced until two-thirty.  Then we went back to his place.  Oh, my God, you wouldn’t believe his body, I mean, we didn’t sleep all night—”  “Nnnnnnn.  Time out!  Don’t tell me more.”  —Betsy Carter, Nothing to Fall Back On: The Life and Times of a Perpetual Optimist.>

interj.  an expression of boredom, as transcribed in Innovations in Science and Mathematics Education: Advance Designs for Technologies of Learning by Michael J. Jacobson.


n.  a “minuscule mosquito-whine of a sound” that proves to onself that one is alive and “not just a spirit lingering inside the clay effigy” of one’s own dead body (Robert Bloch, Robert Bloch’s Psychos); see also nnnnnnnnn.

<I concentrate everything on my chest.  I push, or try to ... and something happens.  A sound!  I make a sound!  It’s mostly inside my closed mouth, but I can also hear and feel it in my nose—a low hum.  Concentrating, summoning every bit of effort, I do it again, and this time the sound is a little stronger, leaking out of my nostrils like cigarette smoke: Nnnnnnn—  It makes me think of an old Alfred Hitchcock TV program I saw a long, long time ago, where Joseph Cotton was paralyzed in a car crash and was finally able to let them know he was still alive by crying a single tear.  —Robert Bloch, Robert Bloch’s Psychos.>

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