Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iː	see	ɪ	sit	e / ɛ	bed	æ	cat
ɑː	father	ɒ	hot (UK)	ɔː	law	ʊ	put
uː	too	ʌ	cup	ɜː	bird	ə	about
eɪ	day	aɪ	my	ɔɪ	boy	aʊ	now
əʊ / oʊ	go (UK / US)	ɪə	near	eə	hair	ʊə	tour

Consonants that look unusual

θ	thin	ð	this	ʃ	she	ʒ	measure
tʃ	church	dʒ	judge	ŋ	sing	j	yes

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.

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grapefruit

UK /ˈɡɹeɪ̯pfɹuːt/ · US /ˈɡɹeɪ̯pfɹut/ noun

Forms grapefruits

noun The tree of the species Citrus paradisi, a hybrid of Citrus maxima and sweet orange.
noun The large spherical tart fruit produced by this tree.
noun (vulgar, usually in the plural) Large breasts; by extension, a woman with large breasts. “Cupping her grapefruits in her hands, she closed her eyes and imagined her date grasping them, exploring their size, weight, and firmness.”

Synonyms

pomelo shaddock forbidden fruit breasts grapefruit tree Citrus × paradisi Citrus sinensis × Citrus grandis Citrus sinensis × Citrus maxima Citrus paradisi

Etymology

Widely assumed to be a marketing term from grape + fruit, an allusion to the supposed grapelike clusters of fruit on the tree, early 19th c. Ciardi proposes another theory: one of the pomelo's botanical names is Citrus grandis, meaning “great citrus [fruit]”, due to the size of its fruit. A new pomelo variety might first have been called a GRAYT-froot (see greatfruit), and through the process of assimilation, the word came to be pronounced GRAYP-froot.

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