variants
or less commonly up-talk
: speech in which each clause, sentence, etc., ends like a question with a rising inflection
Starting in America with the Valley Girls of the 1980s …, uptalk became common among young women across the country by the 1990s.—
Douglas Quenqua, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2012
Douglas Quenqua, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2012called also upspeak
uptalk
intransitive verb
or less commonly up-talk
uptalked also up-talked; uptalking also up-talking; uptalks also up-talks
… girls in my high school who used to buy expensive sandwiches and uptalk.
—Amy Sohn, New York Post, 14 Sept. 1999
Amy Sohn, New York Post, 14 Sept. 1999
The road to job success starts after you study up on these 10 real-world work rules. … 2 Don't up-talk. Speaking in a singsong voice and posing statements as if they were questions leave you sounding girlie and unsure.
—Colleen Rush, Cosmopolitan, January 2006
Colleen Rush, Cosmopolitan, January 2006
Dictionary Entries Near uptalk
Cite this Entry
“Uptalk.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uptalk. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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