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

chow

/t͡ʃaʊ/ noun, verb, proper noun

Also a form of chou zhou

Forms chows chowing chowed

  1. noun (slang, uncountable) Food, especially snacks. “I'm going to pick up some chow for dinner.”
  2. noun (Trinidad and Tobago) Unripe, or partially ripened, fruit seasoned and served as a dish, e.g. pineapple chow or mango chow.
  3. noun A Chow Chow.
  4. noun (chiefly Australia, slang, now rare) A Chinese person.
  5. verb (slang, South Africa) To eat.
  6. noun A prefecture or district of the second rank in China, or the chief city of such a district.
  7. noun (mahjong) A run of three consecutive tiles of the same suit.
  8. noun (mahjong) A call for forming such a run using a discarded tile.
  9. verb (mahjong) To call a discarded tile to produce a chow.
  10. proper noun A surname from Cantonese.
  11. noun A Chow Chow (Chinese breed of dog).

Synonyms

sequence chii Zhou Zhou dynasty Chou Chou dynasty Chow dynasty chuck eats grub chow chow

Etymology

Shortened from chow-chow, from Chinese Pidgin English chow-chow. Compare Macanese chau-cháu. See also English chow fun, chow mein, etc.

Borrowed from Chinese 州 (zhōu).

Phono-semantic matching of Chinese 吃 (chī, literally “to eat”), influenced by the “food” sense of Etymology 1 above.

From Cantonese 周 (zau¹).

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun A prefecture or district of the second rank in China, or the chief city of such a district; --often part of the name of a city, as in Foochow.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “chow”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details