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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

horse-hoarse merger en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /hoːs ˈhoːs ˌmøːdʒə/ (New-Zealand)
  • /hɔɾs ˈhoɾs ˌmɛɾdʒəɾ/ (Scotland)
  • /hoːs ˈhoːs ˌmɜːdʒə/ (Australia)
  • /hɔːs ˈhɔːs ˌmɜːdʒə/ (Received-Pronunciation)
  • /hɔːs ˈhoːs ˌmɜːdʒə/ Manchester
  • /hɔɹs ˈhoɹs ˌmɝdʒɚ/ early 20th century General American, near-obsolete
  • /hoɹs ˈhoɹs ˌmɝdʒɚ/ (General-American)
  • /hɔːs ˈhɔəs ˌmɜːdʒə/ (Received-Pronunciation, obsolete)
  • /hɒːs ˈhoəs ˌmɜ(ɹ)dʒə/ (Eastern-New-England)
  • /hoːs ˈhoːs ˌməːdʒə/ (British, Southern, Standard)

Meanings

  1. A phonemic merger of /ɔɹ/ and /oɹ/, so that pairs of words such as horse and hoarse, war and wore, for and four, etc become homophones.
    • Among the changes, which took place in Dublin English in the 1990s (Hickey 1999), are the following four which are also found in general forms of American English: (a) use of retroflex /r/, in fork [fo:ɻk]; (b) use of an intervocalic alveolar tap, for example in water [wɑɾɚ]; (c) the horse/hoarse‐merger and (d) the which/witch‐merger. 2017 August 9, Raymond Hickey, “Irish English in the Anglophone world”, in World Englishes, volume 36, number 2: