Forero
Senior Member
USA English
I pronounce forehead as my parents did: FORid (o as in fore, not as in far).
Pronunciation: forehead
- Thread starter gaer
- Start date
Loob
Senior Member
English UK
It doesn't to me.
To the best of my recollection, I've only ever heard the "forrid" pronunciation from one person - an extremely ancient teacher of English (now I think back, she was probably only in her late 50s).
It's always been the spelling pronunciation "fore-head" for me....
Last edited:
gaer
Senior Member
US-English
"FA-red" seems to be an old regional pronuncition in the US. Most likely my mother picked it up from my grandmother, who was born in the 1890s, and I picked it up from her or my father, born in England in 1907. It's one of the things I say that my family kids me about, along with "icebox" and "warshing machine". 
I'm a mut. I jokingly say, "Here we jolly well go, guv'na," but I have just a touch of lazy "just sayin'" pronunication from South Florida and my years at FSU, "pickin' up slow talkin' from the South.
I'm a mut. I jokingly say, "Here we jolly well go, guv'na," but I have just a touch of lazy "just sayin'" pronunication from South Florida and my years at FSU, "pickin' up slow talkin' from the South.
Pertinax
Senior Member
BrE->AuE
Longman's Pronunciation Dictionary (2008) contains some interesting statistics. It states that the "h" is dropped by only 12% of AmE speakers, and that "forrid" is preserved by only 35% of BrE speakers.
However, the AmE 12% is an average which falls from from 35% for the oldest speakers to 5% for the youngest speakers, while in BrE "forrid" falls from 47% to 20%.
At that rate "forrid" will be obsolete in a couple of generations. As a "forrid" speaker myself, I mourn its passing.
Recently I was trying to convince an Asian lady that the "b" in "lamb" was silent. She would not accept that. She regarded the failure to sound "b" as a lazy pronunciation, and she insisted on sounding it.
I wonder how many more words will revert to centuries-old pronunciations, under the misconception that English words should be pronounced as they are spelt. I can see some advantages. It will make life easier for non-native speakers. It may knock the wind out of spelling-reform. It might even make it easier to read Shakespeare and Chaucer aloud. But for more recent rhymes, like girls with little curls, it will be horrid.
However, the AmE 12% is an average which falls from from 35% for the oldest speakers to 5% for the youngest speakers, while in BrE "forrid" falls from 47% to 20%.
At that rate "forrid" will be obsolete in a couple of generations. As a "forrid" speaker myself, I mourn its passing.
Recently I was trying to convince an Asian lady that the "b" in "lamb" was silent. She would not accept that. She regarded the failure to sound "b" as a lazy pronunciation, and she insisted on sounding it.
I wonder how many more words will revert to centuries-old pronunciations, under the misconception that English words should be pronounced as they are spelt. I can see some advantages. It will make life easier for non-native speakers. It may knock the wind out of spelling-reform. It might even make it easier to read Shakespeare and Chaucer aloud. But for more recent rhymes, like girls with little curls, it will be horrid.
voltape
Senior Member
Peruvian Spanish/USA English
By all means, it rhymes with horrid - I'll never dare to pronounce it fore-head. And I have had quite a number of quarrels about it!
