Whore
From Hull AWE
Revision as of 16:39, 21 June 2007 by JoachimNoreiko (Talk | contribs)
This is one of the few words in English in which the _wh_ phoneme is realised with the sound '_h_'. (Most are sounded with the -w_. See W - Wh.) whore sounds like 'haw', SAMPA: /hO:r/ or in the North-east of England, Scotland and other places as 'hoor' SAMPA: /hu:r/.
The word was common in Shakespeare's times to mean a prostitute. Nowadays, in colloquial speech, it is an insult used about a woman, usually with a connotation of sexual looseness.
