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

stoat

UK /ˈstəʊt/ · US /ˈstoʊt/ noun, verb

Also a form of stout

Forms stoats stoating stoated stote

  1. noun Mustela erminea, the ermine or short-tailed weasel, a mustelid native to Eurasia and North America, distinguished from the least weasel by its larger size and longer tail with a prominent black tip.
  2. verb (sewing, transitive) To stitch (edges of relatively thick cloth, fur, etc, for example on either side of a join or tear) together in a way that is invisible from the 'front', by sewing part of the way into and then back out of the thickness of the material from the 'back' side (without the thread going all the way through to the 'front' side of the material).

Synonyms

clubster ermine short-tailed weasel

Etymology

From Middle English stote (“the ermine, especially in its brown summer coat”), of uncertain origin. The word bears some resemblance to Old Norse stutr (“bull”), Swedish stut (“bull, steer”) and Danish stud (“steer”) (see also English stot), but the semantic link is difficult unless a common origin is from “(brown?) male mammal”. First attested in the mid 1400s.

Unclear. Attested in the spellings stott, stot, stote and stoat, all said (in early texts) to be pronounced the same as stoat. Possibly related to the animal stoat whose fur is used in making garments, or to stot(t) (“bounce, rebound”) as the stitch 'rebounds' off and does not pass through to the other side of the material.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun The ermine in its summer pelage, when it is reddish brown, but with a black tip to the tail. The name is sometimes applied also to other brown weasels.

Etymology [OE. stot a stoat, horse, bullock; perhaps originally only of male animals, and akin to D. stooten to push, E. stutter; cf. Icel. st a bull, Sw. stut a bullock. Cf. Stot.]

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