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In the broadest sense of the word, a vocable (from ) is any identifiable utterance or writing, such as a word or term, that is fixed by its language and culture. The Cambridge Companion to Saussure The use of the term for words in the broad sense is archaic and the term is instead used for utterances which are not considered , such as the English of assent and denial, uh-huh and uh-uh , or the interjection of error, uh-oh .Danesi (2004) A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics
Such non-lexical vocables are often used in music, for example la la la or dum dee dum, or in magical incantations, such as abra-cadabra. Scat singing is essentially all vocables.William R. Bauer, "Scat Singing: A Timbral and Phonemic Analysis", Current Musicology, 2002, no.71-73, Many Native American songs consist entirely of vocables; this may be due to both phonetic substitution to increase the Sonorant of the song, and to the trade of songs between nations speaking different languages.Golla (2011) California Indian Languages, ยง4.12.4 Jewish also feature wordless melodies composed entirely of vocables such as Yai nai nai or Yai dai dai.
Vocables are common as , such as um and er in English, where they have little formal meaning and are rarely purposeful.
that mimic the structure of real words are used in experiments in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, for example the nonsense syllables introduced by Hermann Ebbinghaus.
The Babbling of infants, which are meaningful but do not correspond to words of adult speech, are also sometimes called vocables.Crystal (2008) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
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