Ough is a four-letter sequence, a tetragraph, used in English orthography and notorious for its unpredictable pronunciation. It has at least eight pronunciations in North American English and nine in British English, and no discernable patterns for choosing among them.
An example sentence using the nine pronunciations commonly found in modern usage is, "The wind was rough along the lough as the ploughman fought through the snow, and though he hiccoughed and coughed, his work was thorough." Other pronunciations can be found in proper nouns, many of which are of Celtic origin rather than English. For example, ough can represent in the surname Coughlin, in Ayscough, and in the name Colcolough in Virginia. The two occurrences of in the English place name Loughborough are pronounced differently, resulting in. Additionally, three parishes of Milton Keynes—Woughton, Loughton and Broughton —all have different pronunciations of the combination. Tough, though, through and thorough are formed by adding another letter each time, yet none of them rhyme. Some humorous verse has been written to illustrate this seeming incongruity:
"A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode, coughing and hiccoughing, thoughtfully through the streets of Scarborough."
Because of the unpredictability of the combination, many English spelling reformers have proposed replacing it with more phonetic combinations, some of which have caught on in varying degrees of formal and informal success. Generally, spelling reforms have been more widely accepted in the United States and less so in other English-speaking areas. One problem is that a pronunciation with the velar fricative is still found locally in parts of North-East Scotland, where, for example, trough is pronounced. In April 1984, at its yearly meeting, the Simplified Spelling Society adopted the following reform as its house style:
Shorten to when it is sounded as : through → thru.
Shorten to when it is sounded as : though → tho.
Shorten to when it is sounded as : bough → bou, plough → plou, drought → drout.
Change to when it is sounded as : ought → aut, bought → baut, thought → thaut.
Change to or when there is the sound : cough → cof, enough → enuf, tough → tuf.
In early colonial America, John Smith used the spelling raugroughcum for the animal we know today as the raccoon. This was a new animal to the explorers and, alongside the tribal nameQuiyoughcohannock, shows that the ough combination was still being used to coin new words in early colonial America. Another placename is Youghiogheny, which begins with.
Already varyingly formal
In the UK, the worddough can also be pronounced, a pronunciation remembered in the spelling in the wordduffpudding. Likewise, the word enough can be pronounced or and the spelling enow is an acceptable dialect or poetic spelling. The following spellings are generally considered unacceptable in other areas, but are standard in the United States:
naught instead of nought – some archaic uses of nought have been replaced with not
plow instead of plough
slew or sluff instead of the two corresponding pronunciations of slough
donut instead of doughnut
Common informal
thru instead of through: it is a common abbreviated spelling in the US and standard on road signs, where it conserves space and is quicker to read: e.g., "drive thru" for drive-through and "thru traffic" for "through traffic"
tho and altho instead of though and although
'nuff instead of enough
However, all of these are considered unacceptable in written British English and formal American English, with the exception of in the most casual and informal forms of textual conversation.
is orthographically rather similar to, but admits much less pronunciation variation:
as in laugh, draught, laughter
The similar yields at least five standard pronunciations, although two are only found in words derived from proper names:
as in cow, now, bow, sow, row, glower, town, owl, etc.
as in crow, know, bow, sow, row, lower, own, bowl, etc.
as in knowledge, acknowledge
as in bowie knife
as in bowdlerize
Dialectal forms also render pronunciations such as winder, yeller for window, yellow, and fella, tomorra for fellow, tomorrow. A comparable group is, which differs however in that, unlike, it does not ever represent a single phoneme. can be pronounced in at least five ways:
as in bomb
as in comb, clomb
as in tomb, womb
as in aplomb
as in buncombe, coxcombry
When a syllable is added after the, the is often pronounced, resulting in a total of at least eight pronunciations of :
as in somber , rhombus, zombie, combat, wombat, etc.
as in Colombia
as in combine
—but not, for example, in bomber, comber, entombing, etc. The group also has a wide variety of pronunciations, in part because of the two phonemes represented in English. Here are seven different pronunciations:
as in both, loth, lothario, quoth, sloth, troth
as in hypothesis, apothecary, broth, cloth, froth, Goth, moth, sloth
as in nothing
as in behemoth, mammoth
as in betroth
as in bother
as in another, brother, mother, other, smother
The group has at least nine pronunciations, though unlike with or, context often suggests the correct pronunciation:
as in long, prong, song, strong, thong, tong, wrong
