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Well, W'ON, I um... looked it up, and .. er... it .. ah, appears that ..um .. it's ... er .. in the Dick'n'harry:
um
// for defs 1 and 3, // , // for def. 2
--interjection 1. (an indication of hesitation or inarticulateness). 2. (an expression of doubt, pensiveness, etc.).
--phrase (ummed; umming) 3. um and ah, Colloquial a. to be indecisive. b. to prevaricate.
er
// , // interjection (the written representation of an inarticulate sound made by a speaker when hesitating).
uh
// , // interjection (a written representation of a sound made by a speaker when hesitating): would you, uh, sort of, uh, like to dance? [imitative of various inarticulate sounds] (from www.macquariedictionary.com.au)
Do that make it word, Juan .. er, W'ON?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Do that make it word, Juan .. er, W'ON?Um, I dunno, Hev...I'm still, uh, juandering about it.... 
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"Um's and er's are signs that the tongue is in gear when the brain is in neutral.
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...many times I have sat through boring lectures, counting the number of um's. I believe the record is 76 in a 1-hour lecture!
Not even close, my dear. By a good order of magnitude.
The scene: Fall, 1961; Emerson Hall, room 101. The speaker: Willard van Ormand Quine, a person of no mean intellect. The course: Philosophy 140 ("Propositional Logic"). Twenty minutes into the lecture, realizing the unusually high frequency of uh-ing, my roommate and I started taking turns scribing one hundred uh's, gave up in amazement and disbelief and stopped at one thousand, with about five minutes left to go in the lecture.
Actual count. First-hand report. Thirty a minute, and more. They came singly or in salvos of up to four and five. I kid you not.
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Hey wofa, that's pretty impressive (over 1000 ums in one lecture)....I can't even begin to match it, but I feel compelled to share with you and ewein (and anyone else who might care!) that I had a math teacher in high school who had two verbal "blips" that were actual phrases:
1. in this case, and
2. in terms of.
He used them so often that a friend and I each picked one and totted up the number of times he used them in a class. He used each phrase over a dozen times in one lesson. We did a "scene" about it for Spanish class, and I still remember the translation for the first phrase (but not, alas, the second):
"en este caso."
On a related note, I once wrote an article for a local magazine about a radio broadcaster. The mag is called Profile Kingston, and it always has three or four profiles of "unsung" Kingstonians (who are then sung? I dunno!). This fellow is a music buff - he had a HUUUUUGE collection of vinyl, tapes and CDs at his apartment (as well as lots of plants - go figger), and he wrote a big thick book all about the history of radio in this area (strange geographical anomaly makes radio frequencies next to impossible to pick up in a certain corridor between Ottawa, our capital city, and Kingston - I think it's to do with the honkin' big rock formation known as the Canadian Shield, but it might also have been to do with the Frontenac Axis). He was telling me about being a broadcaster, and he said, "I never say 'um.' You can learn not to."
Ever since he told me that, I have paid a lot of attention to my own speech - and I do still say "um" but I try to avoid it, particularly when I myself am being interviewed - and to the speech of radio broadcasters, because I'm interested. This feller maintained that it's just lazy and there's no need. I do find it interesting to listen to the radio and hear who "um"s and who doesn't. Those who don't are more compelling to listen to.
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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Are ums, uhs, and ers really words?
I think these sounds are to speech and silence what swamps are to land and water: the shallower the topography, the more extended they tend to be.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, an interjection is a part of speech, so they're words of often indiscernable meaning.
I like the observation about the topography above. However, I must say that one of the brightest, most creative women I know uses uhs regularly in speech--and her topography is rich and broad. I like her by far too much to suggest that she drain those swamps. It's worth wading through them to get over to the mountains to which she ascends. Ah [that's an interjection, too], what vistas she provides!
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Do that make it word..?Nah, Hev! As specified in the dictionary, that makes these terms interjections. I think you could argue that interjections shouldn't really be in the dictionary in the first place. Like, how do you spell them? Is uh the same as huh or uhh ? Is er the same as erm or ehm ? Do um, er and uh mean more or less the same thing anyway? If you don't have a consistent set of spellings and meanings, you ain't got much of a word, eh? (or hein? as belM may have it..)  I find myself writing a fair amount of hmmmms, a supposedly thoughtful interjection. But the written words lie - in reality I say errrmmmms a lot more. Eek, the truth is out now.  Fisk
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From Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
(part of the sphinx's riddle to Harry, during the third task of the Triwizard Tournament)
And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
(as Harry sorts the riddle out, this is what he comes up with)
"A sound often heard in the search for a hard-to-find word," said Harry. "Er...that'd be...er...hang on - 'er'! 'Er's a sound!"
The sphinx smiled at him.
The sphinx's riddle in that Harry Potter is NOT one that a Canajun child could solve, methinks (but perhaps other Canucks here may wish to contradict me?) - because Canajuns don't say "er" when they're thinking - we really tend to say "um" or "ah" (or, as in the case of someone I knew at high school, "um-ah").
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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