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[Beverly Flanigan]

'Cough' rhymes with 'slough'?  For me, 'tough' rhymes with 'slough'=v.;
'through' rhymes with 'slough'=n. (as of Despond).  And 'cough' rhymes with
'trough'  (not on the list).  But maybe your vowel in 'cough' is /a/=low
back unrounded, vs. my low back rounded /oh/?  In which case, I suppose
your v. 'slough' and 'trough' would both rhyme with it?

In any case, I get 7 pronunciations, including the 'gh' where it represents
a consonant.  ('Scarborough' doesn't end in a schwa for me, though I
believe it does in the BritEng list; and Brits may pronounce 'slough' with
/aw/, as I recall, to make a total of 9 pronunciations.  I couldn't bring
up the website to check my memory on this.)

At 10:16 PM 12/5/99 -0800, you wrote:
>You're right of course. So I distinguish 8 "ough"s not 7. I could see
>cough rhyming with slough but that would still leave 8 pronunciations.
>
>Allen
>maberry at u.washington.edu
>
>On Sun, 5 Dec 1999, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
>
> > >I...and the ough
> > >in "thought" = the the ough in "coughed".
> >
> > Surely you don't say either thawft to rhyme with kawft or, conversely, kawt
> > to rhyme with thawt...
> >
> > Rima
> >