[f. STAMMER v.] A stammering mode of utterance.
1773. Goldsm., Stoops to Conq., II. i. This stammer in my address,… can never permit me to soar above the reach of a milliner’s prentice.
1835. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Parish, i. The beadle … states the case without a single stammer.
1842. Penny Cycl., XXII. 429/1. Stammer with this spasm distorts the utterance by an involuntary extension of some part of the syllable. Ibid. In the looseness of language … all kinds of difficult and defective utterance are misnamed stammer….
1895. R. H. Shepherd, in N. & Q., Ser. VIII. VII. 503. Lamb … made the … witty retort, conveyed in his usual roll of stammers: ‘I n-nev-never-h-heard-you-d-do-anything else.’
transf. 1898. Kipling, Fleet in Being, iv. 45. The little demon [a Maxim gun] set up the ‘irritating stammer’ that the nine point two gun found so objectionable.
