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Ough is a four-letter sequence, a tetragraph, used in English orthography and notorious for its unpredictable pronunciation. [1] It has at least eight pronunciations in North American English and nine in British English , and no discernible patterns exist for choosing among them.
ough has ten possible pronunciations, five of which make vowel sounds: /aʊ/ as in drought, /ɔː/ as in bought, /oʊ/ as in though, /uː/ as in through, and /ə/ as in thorough. ueue represents /juː/ , as in queue .
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 14 January 2025. This is a list of onomatopoeias, i.e. words that imitate, resemble, or suggest the source of the sound that they describe. For more information, see the linked articles. Human vocal sounds Achoo, Atishoo, the sound of a sneeze Ahem, a sound made to clear the throat or to draw attention ...
English does not have tetragraphs in native words (the closest is perhaps the sequence -ough in words like through), but chth and phth are true tetragraphs when found initially in words of Greek origin such as chthonic and phthisis. Phonemes spelled with multiple characters often indicate that either the phoneme or the script is alien to the ...
Ough itself is a word, an exclamation of disgust similar to ugh, though rarely known or used. The following are typical pronunciations of this string of letters: / oʊ / (as in so) in though and dough / ʌ f / (as in cuff) in tough, rough, enough, and the name Hough / ɒ f / (as in off) in trough, cough, and Gough
In the dominant dialects of modern English, gh is almost always either silent or pronounced /f/ (see Ough). It is thought that before disappearing, the sound became partially or completely voiced to [ɣx] or [ɣ] , which would explain the new spelling — Old English used a simple h — and the diphthongization of any preceding vowel.
This list does not include place names in the United Kingdom or the United States, or places following spelling conventions of non-English languages. For UK place names, see List of irregularly spelled places in the United Kingdom. For US place names, see List of irregularly spelled places in the United States.
Note that some words contain an ae which may not be written æ because the etymology is not from the Greek -αι-or Latin -ae-diphthongs. These include: In instances of aer (starting or within a word) when it makes the sound IPA [ɛə]/[eə] (air). Comes from the Latin āër, Greek ἀήρ. When ae makes the diphthong / eɪ / (lay) or / aɪ ...