Humanities › English What Is the Correct Pronunciation of 'February'? Print Image Source / Getty Images English English Grammar An Introduction to Punctuation Writing By Richard Nordquist Richard Nordquist English and Rhetoric Professor Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester B.A., English, State University of New York Dr. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on April 20, 2019 While "Feb-RU-ary" is still considered the standard pronunciation, most dictionaries recognize the pronunciation of February without the first "r" ("Feb-U-ary") as an acceptable variant. Varying Opinions on Pronouncing February Read More How to Know When You Mispronounce a Word By Richard Nordquist Not everyone is so tolerant. In his Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations (2005), purist Charles Harrington Elster defends the "traditional and cultivated pronunciation." February, he says, "is a different word and a different month, with a peculiar spelling, a peculiar pronunciation, and a very peculiar number of days, all of which adds up to the fact that we must treat the creature with particular respect." Yet in common speech, the shortest month has long been abused. In The New Schoolmaster, a one-act play that appeared in Sargent's School Monthly in May 1858, Mr. Hardcase says of February that "there is a prejudice in favor of an 'r' at the beginning of the second syllable; but if you choose to drop it, where's the harm?" Why People Drop the "R" in February The loss of the first "r" in the pronunciation of February is (in part) the result of a process called dissimilation (or haplology), where one of two similar sounds in a word is sometimes changed or dropped to avoid the repetition of that sound. (A similar process sometimes occurs with the pronunciation of library.) More simply, as Kate Burridge points out in Weeds in the Garden of Words (2005), the standard pronunciation of February "takes considerable effort, and in normal rapid speech we're likely to drop the first 'r.'" Also, the pronunciation of January has probably contributed to the simplified pronunciation of February. There are, of course, many discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation in English. As David Crystal reminds us in The English Language, "[S]peech came first, in the history of our species," and "English spelling hasn't been a good guide to pronunciation for hundreds of years." Cite this Article Format mla apa chicago Your Citation Nordquist, Richard. "What Is the Correct Pronunciation of 'February'?" ThoughtCo, Aug. 27, 2020, thoughtco.com/correct-pronunciation-of-february-1691019. Nordquist, Richard. (2020, August 27). What Is the Correct Pronunciation of 'February'? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/correct-pronunciation-of-february-1691019 Nordquist, Richard. "What Is the Correct Pronunciation of 'February'?" ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/correct-pronunciation-of-february-1691019 (accessed May 1, 2024). copy citation