English · Idiom Candidate

hum and haw

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Sense 1

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To hesitate or avoid making a decision

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

ngại ngùng hoặc tránh đưa ra quyết định

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: make indecisive sounds

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Everyone else I met at the LIBF was welcoming, even when I was humming and hawing over buying singles or two copies of a small number of titles.

What if he came in this evening through a door that wasn't there and sat in a chair - shape, reading a paper that had never been printed, saying aloud bits that were only hum and haw again to me?

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Sense 2

Meaning · English

to hesitate, or raise objections.—Old English.

Era: ca. 1874 (Victorian)

Where it’s used: Origin British & Irish English

Sources & notes

Historical definition reproduced from Hotten’s The Slang Dictionary (1874, public domain; Project Gutenberg #42108, retrieved 2026-07-31). Reflects the attitudes of its era.

Topics: Historical slang (1800s)

Common questions

What does “hum and haw” mean?

To hesitate or avoid making a decision Literally: make indecisive sounds

Is “hum and haw” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.