Word of the Day

Pronunciation Guide

The AskOxford Word of the Day entries are sourced from the Oxford Dictionary of English, which uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England (sometimes called Received Pronunciation or RP).

Pronunciations are only given where they are likely to cause problems for the native speaker of English, in particular for foreign words, foreign names, scientific and other specialist terms, rare words, words with unusual stress patterns, and words where there are alternative pronunciations or where there is a dispute about the standard pronunciation. Therefore not every entry for the Word of the Day will have pronunciation help.

The symbols used for English words, with their values, are given below.

Consonants: b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their usual English values. Other symbols are used as follows:

g get t chip d jar x loch ring	thin this she decision j yes
Vowels
SHORT VOWELS
a cat bed ago sit i cosy	hot run put
LONG VOWELS ( indicates length)
a arm hair her	i see saw u too
DIPHTHONGS
my a how e day no	near boy poor
TRIPTHONGS
fire	a sour

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