Meanings
- nonstandardUsed as a filled pause to imitate a stereotypical non-native English speaker: how do you say it? What is the expression?
I am a safe installer here to install-a da safe. So just a-point to where the guacamole money is, and I'll-a install-a the safe-a in da, how you say, a-place?
2017 January 12, Andrew Law, “What's My Motivation” (11:30 from the start), in The Good Place, season 1, episode 11 (television production), spoken by Pillboi (Eugene Cordero), via NBC2 more examples
Wine Merchant: “What do you think of the sample, Monsieur; fifteen years in bottle, hey, hey?”—Frenchman: “How you say, Sare, fifteen years in bottle; how that it possceble, when instanement that I pop out the cork, out comes one large fly. […]
1827 April 17, “Mr. Mathews at Home; or, Home Circuit and Cockney Gleanings”, in The Kaleidoscope; or, Literary and Scientific Mirror, volume 7, number 355, Liverpool: E. Smith & Co., page 339“I come to thees country to make new life. Rico, he tells me I can do good here. Signor Mosko, I pay him the monies, he weel arrange. Ees no good. I am—how you say?—without help. […]
1950 May, Robert Bloch, “Tell Your Fortune”, in Dorothy McIlwraith, editor, Weird Tales, volume 42, number 4, New York, page 10
Cite this entry
how you say. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/how%20you%20say
“how you say.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/how%20you%20say. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “how you say,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/how%20you%20say.
Source: how you say on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.