father-bother merger

UK/ˌfɑː.ðə ˈbɒ.ðə ˈmɜː.dʒə/British, Southern, Standard/ˌfɑː.ðə ˈbɔ.ðə ˈməː.dʒə/Australia/ˌfɐː.ðə ˈbɔ.ðə ˈmɜː.dʒə/Scotland/ˌfa.ðəɾ ˈbɔ.ðəɾ ˈmɛɾ.dʒəɾ/

noun

A phonemic merger in English of the vowels /ɑː/ (as in father) and /ɒ/ (as in bother).

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Meanings

nounfather-bother merger (plural father-bother mergers)

plural father-bother mergers

  1. A phonemic merger in English of the vowels /ɑː/ (as in father) and /ɒ/ (as in bother).

    The first is the father-bother merger, a loss of rounding contrast in the low back vowels by which the originally contrastive /ɒ/ has been subsumed by /ɑː/ into the fused phoneme /ɑ/.

    2018, Gregory H. Bontrager, “Ambisyllabicity in an Optimal-Theoretic Model of English Stress Assignment”, in Florida Linguistics Papers, volume 5, number 2
Cite this entry
APA

father-bother merger. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/father-bother%20merger

MLA

“father-bother merger.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/father-bother%20merger. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “father-bother merger,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/father-bother%20merger.

Source: father-bother merger on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.