Interjects

Interjects, in linguistics, refer to the use of interjections—words or phrases that express spontaneous emotion or reaction and stand apart from the grammatical structure of a sentence. They include items such as oh, wow, ouch, alas, and well, as well as other exclamations and fillers. Interjects can be single lexical items or short phrases, and they are often set off by punctuation or intonation.

Their primary function is affective: to convey feelings (surprise, pain, joy, doubt) or to express attitudes toward what is said. They can also serve discourse-management purposes, signaling attention, indicating hesitation, or marking a shift in topic. Some interjects function as discourse markers or fillers rather than as pure exclamations, for example well, hmm, or you know, which help organize spoken interaction without adding propositional content.

Syntactically, interjects are typically independent of the surrounding sentence; they do not inflect for tense, number, or other grammatical categories and may interrupt a clause in mid-stream. They vary across languages in how they are formed and distributed, often relying on phonetic or prosodic features to convey intensity.

The noun interjection derives from Latin interiectio, literally “a throwing in,” reflecting their conversational role. The verb interject, and its third-person singular form interjects, describes the act of inserting such a remark into discourse.

Interjects are common in spoken language and informal writing, where they contribute emotional color, immediacy, and interactional nuance.