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

measly

UK /ˈmiːzli/ · US /ˈmizli/ adjective

Forms measlier measliest measley

  1. adjective Particularly of pigs or pork: infected with larval tapeworms or trichinae (parasitic roundworms).
  2. adjective Of a person: infected with measles.
  3. adjective (figuratively, informal) Small (especially contemptibly small) in amount. “For one whole day's work all I was given was twenty measly pounds.”

Synonyms

miserable paltry trifling

Etymology

From measle (“singular of measles”) + -y; the word measle is either from Middle Dutch masel (“a blister filled with blood; a pustule, a skin blemish”), or Middle Low German masel (“a red skin blemish”), from Proto-Germanic *masuraz (“a knot or scar in wood; a knarl”), from *mas-, *mēs- (“a spot; a sore; a scar”), from Proto-Indo-European *mos- (“a skin sore”).

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Infected with measles.
  2. adjective Containing larval tapeworms; --said of pork and beef.

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