Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

box office

UK /ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/ · US /ˈbɑksˌɑfɪs/ noun

Forms box offices box-office boxoffice

  1. noun (countable, film, theater) A place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema. “The movie tanked at the box office.”
  2. noun (uncountable, by extension, film) The total amount of money paid by people worldwide to watch a movie at cinemas/movie theaters. “box office receipts”
  3. noun (uncountable) Quality of an entertainment or spectacle that makes it very popular with the public, or likely to be so. “His performance last night was pure box office.”

Synonyms

ticket office ticket booth

Etymology

1786, presumably from sales of boxes, box seats (“separated private seating”). Sense of “total sales” from 1904.
Folk etymology is that this derives from Elizabethan theatre, where theater admission was collected in a box attached to a long stick, passed around the audience. However, the term is first attested over a century later (theaters were closed in 1642), making this highly unlikely.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “box office”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details