A couple of words that struck me while rummaging through my new Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate (see this post):
1) trough ‘a long shallow often V-shaped receptacle for the drinking water or feed of domestic animals’: pronunciations ˈtrȯf, ˈtrȯth, by bakers often ˈtrō. It never would have occurred to me that it was anything but the first (/trɔf/); has anybody heard the others?
2) jerrican ‘a narrow flat-sided container for liquids usually holding about five U.S. gallons (about 19 liters)’: etymology Jerry + can; from its German design. Who knew?
And a very happy new year to all those who follow the Gregorian calendar!
CEPD notes that “some bakers pronounce /traʊ/”. That seems to be a different diphthong, unless it’s a misprint for /trəʊ/.
Huh. The plot thickens!
The toth coths as he ploths the doth.
…and here I was rhyming trough with cough. I don’t think I ever got an opportunity to pronounce it, though (or use it in poetry, heh).
And the plural troughs may voice the /f/ to /v/ or the /θ/ to /ð/. Thus a single lexeme adds three otherwise unknown pronunciations to English’s most notorious tetragraph.
I have heard of a “jerry can” but would not have recognised “jerrican”, which looks like a cousin of “pemmican”. Dictionaries vary as to which spelling to prefer out of “jerry can” “jerrycan” “jerrican”
So bakers often rhyme it with “dough”? (Presumably they’re referring to some vessel/container used in bakeries that does not usually hold feed or water for livestock although it has a similar shape?)
I don’t recall having ever heard the word “trough” pronounced, but I think I would have guessed “trow”, rhyming with “cow”. I’m not sure what that would be in diphthong terms.
@DM: To be clear, the standard pronunciation Hat quoted does rhyme with cough. But apparently Americans without the cot-caught merger pronounce both with the THOUGHT vowel (unlike BrE speakers). I have the merger so I was blissfully unaware of this.
Bareka nɛ ya yʋʋmpaalig, yanam Zupibigdim la wʋsa!
(A Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i chi.)
@F: I think it might be more illuminating to say that we pronounce both with the CLOTH vowel. Which is admittedly the same as the THOUGHT vowel in our dialect. But putting both “trough” and “cough” in the CLOTH set rather than the THOUGHT set explains why Brits pronounce them the way they do (i.e., with their rather different CLOTH vowel).
It’s still A.D. 2025 where I am, but due to the vagaries of longitude the odometer switched over from Reiwa 7 to Reiwa 8 in Japan back when I was having lunch earlier. So 明けましておめでとう to all.
…correction, then: replace cough with rough.