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The "oa" in the word "broad" is pronounced like the words "or" or "awe". In phonetic symbols that is ɔː . However in all other examples I can think of it is pronounced like the "oe" in "toe". Or in phonetic symbols, əʊ . For example, in goat, toast, oat and so on.

Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English brád , identical with Old Frisian brêd , Old Saxon brêd (Middle Dutch breet -d- , Dutch breed ), Old High German (Middle High German and modern German) breit , Old Norse breið-r , (Swedish, Danish bred ), Gothic braiþ-s < Old Germanic *braido-z : no related words are known even in Germanic, except its own derivatives

Although perhaps not directly relevant to the question, where it makes a difference I am talking about British English pronunciation. So broad is pronounced /brɔːd/ , both or and awe are pronounced /ɔː/, toe is pronounced /təʊ/, goat is pronounced /ɡəʊt/ and so on and so forth.

tchrist
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Simd
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    It depends whether you count oar or not. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 07:47
  • @ChrisH Nice example. You are however right that the final "r" makes this is a slightly different case I think. – Simd Apr 19 '15 at 07:48
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    The pronunciation presumably comes from the language of origin. It would probably be a better question to ask why it was spelled with oa. – Barmar Apr 19 '15 at 08:59
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    @Barmar: broad comes from Old English brád. For comparison, goad comes from Old English gád and load comes from Old English lád. Since Old English was spelled more or less phonetically, I would guess that they rhymed in Old English. So here the pronunciation may not come from the language of origin. – Peter Shor Apr 19 '15 at 12:06
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    @PeterShor Yeah, I suspect that for some reason the pronunciation of this word shifted. But it wasn't part of a general trend, it was totally alone. – Barmar Apr 19 '15 at 12:07
  • There are other pronunciations - consider for example coagulate - but most of them have a clear structure of a prefix ending -o and a stem starting a-. The searches in my answer below will lead you to yet more pronunciations. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 14:29
  • But or/oar and awe have different vowels: the first is a tense /o/ as in coat and core while the second a lax /ɔ/ as in cloth and thought. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:26
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    @tchrist I think you may be referring to US English. In British English they are both /ɔː/ . In US English it seems that "or " is pronounced /ɔ(ə)r/ where "awe" is pronounced /ɔː/ . – Simd Apr 19 '15 at 15:29
  • This is hardly just the United States: Canada certainly pronounces north as [noɹθ]. It’s not *nawrth, which sounds funny. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:30
  • @tchrist Again, my dictionary says the following for North. Brit. /nɔːθ/ , U.S. /nɔ(ə)rθ/ – Simd Apr 19 '15 at 15:30
  • @dorothy Perhaps your dictionary does not understand North American phonology? That vowel is tense here, not lax. I grew up just south of the US–Canadian border if that makes any difference, so I have a northern dialect. Southern dialects are different, though — in North America just as in Britain. :) – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:31
  • @tchrist Everything is possible. It is the OED after all. – Simd Apr 19 '15 at 15:32
  • Wells has a tense /or/ for both NORTH and FORCE in Canada as well as for the Inland North (my dialect). Then again, he also has a tense /oː/ not a lax /ɔː/ for those in London itself. Scotland and Ireland vary, some with a tense /o/ and others with a lax /ɔ/. I probably should have written those with phonetic brackets not phonemic slashes, but North America has (virtually) no /r/ as in Scottish, yet Wells uses or for North America. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:44
  • @tchrist: Some North American English speakers have no distinction between /ɔ/ and /o/ before an /r/ in the same syllable. Some do. I think any blanket statement about it will be bound to be inaccurate-- it is an entire continent of speakers and dialects. – herisson Apr 19 '15 at 18:40
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    @dorothy: there are some speakers in North America who make a distinction between the vowels in hoarse and horse. This is the distinction the OED is trying to convey. However, the number of people who make this distinction is rapidly declining ... Merriam-Webster dropped this distinction from their pronunciations some time ago, and the American Heritage Dictionary did two or three years ago. You can probably still hear it in a few dialects, but it won't last much longer. – Peter Shor Apr 21 '15 at 15:29

2 Answers2

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First we must set aside oar, board etc. (i.e. where the oa is followed by r). Then there are no rhymes for broad in my Penguin rhyming dictionary that are spelt --oad and aren't derived from broad (/brɔːd/ according to Collins) itself. So there aren't any reasonably common words with that spelling and pronunciation in the last syllable.

Because that only eliminated words ending with broad's --oad, I tried something different -- generating lists of words containing oa and checking the pronunciation. OneLook's pattern matching dictionary fed with oa and the regex dictionary at http://www.visca.com/regexdict/ fed with .+oa[^r].* (i.e. 1 or more characters followed by "oa" then anything other than "r" and 0 or more characters -- not perfect but a decent approximation) give rather long lists. Scanning those lists I can't find anything to suggest that broad isn't unique -- there are unfamiliar words there but they don't look like they should be pronounced --or--.

Tl;dr: yes - I'm now waiting to be proved wrong.

Edit: note that some of the examples in this answer have a British English bias to them, the answer itself is unaffected

Chris H
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    Broad /brɔd/ and board /bord/ no more rhyme than do cost /kɔst/ and coast /kost/. Scots voar from Norse vár meaning spring is /vɔr/. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 14:44
  • @tchrist that must be an accent thing -- Collins says they do (on paper), also Oxford online: /brɔːd/ and /bɔːd/. Neither gives an alternative pronunciation, and the rhyming dictionary listed them together. I can't think of an accent in which they don't rhyme (and with e.g. cord /kɔːd/), but I'm no expert on accents. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 14:48
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    Collins online also gives oar /ɔː/, broad /brɔːd/, board /bɔːd/ and voar /vɔː/. Cost comes out as /kɒst/. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 14:58
  • I’d like to see a minimal pair for /or/ and /ɔr/ because I don’t think such exists in North America. For example, course and coarse are both [koɹs] for us, just as north is [noɹθ]. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 14:59
  • Please don’t delete phonemic /r/. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 14:59
  • @tchrist with my southern (-England) English accent and British resources on paper I'd struggle to do that. And I'm not deleting anything, my IPA is pasted directly from the source (I don't know the unicode for it and haven't made a crib sheet) – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:00
  • Please show a minimal pair for tense /or/ versus lax /ɔr/. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:13
  • @tchrist /or/ just doesn't make much sense to me in this context (without another vowel next). M-W online's audio pronunciation makes your question clear (they also give different IPa to my sources) -- but have a listen at http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/broad and you'll hear where I'm coming from -- i.e. the minimal pair you're asking for has nothing to do with my answer -- or the question unless en-us is specified. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:13
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    I confess that /ɔr/ does not make much sense to me, which is why I would like a minimal pair to prove that it exists in English. The relevance to your answer is that you are claiming broad and board rhyme, and that seems quite wrong to me, since broad has a lax vowel and board a tense one using the traditional tense–lax contrast. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:16
  • @tchrist, the first mention of /ɔr/ was in your voar which is Scottish dialect, and a new word for me. The terminal /r/ is audible in some Scottish accents in cases like this, but not in RP. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:17
  • @tchrist we're pushing the limits of what I know here -- can you hear the same tense-lax difference in the UK pronunciations at Collins? – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:18
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    I listened to both at Collins, and despite what they are writing, the speakers are clearly using a lax vowel in broad but a tense vowel in board. That means their transcription is wrong, since it does not match what the speakers are actually saying. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:20
  • @tchrist, having played them both again I'll grant you that one (the distinction is actually more marked at oxforddictionaries.com) -- but there's no /r/, which is where we started this discussion. I don't claim that /ɔr/ exists in standard British English, in fact neither does /or/ on its own. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:24
  • @tchrist I think this discussion has drifted away from (a) the question and my answer, and (b) my knowledge of the finer details of pronunciation. I've noted the British bias in the examples I used; the actual answer is unaffected. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:28
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    @ChrisH Do questions/answers that have a US bias also have to indicate this I wonder? – Simd Apr 19 '15 at 15:40
  • @dorothy, I doubt it, while it's not exactly a democracy British-English speakers are outvoted. However your question and the main point of my answer don't actually have this bias, it's just the supporting examples. – Chris H Apr 19 '15 at 15:44
  • I think you’re right: I looked pretty hard in the OED and there is no other common CVC word apart from broad which is spelt with orthographic ‹oa› but pronounced with a lax /ɔ/. This seems the same as how bread has a lax vowel today due to the Great Vowel Shift’s effect on Old English bréad. I strongly recommend against dragging rhotic variation into the picture, as it can only muddy it. – tchrist Apr 19 '15 at 15:53
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    @tchrist: In New York City, try Laurence and Lorentz, or Taurus and torus. Outside the U.S. Northeast, I'm not sure that there are any examples. – Peter Shor Apr 19 '15 at 15:56
  • @tchrist It's not perfect, but showroom/Shoreham is close to a minimal pair. But if you meant /or/ to mean something different from two of the sounds in "showroom", it's not clear to me what you meant by it. – Rosie F Feb 14 '18 at 10:08
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The original derived noun was "brede" from which the broad, not narrow, pronunciation came for broad. "Breadth" took place of "brede" in Middle English. Why the spelling changed to broad is unknown.

Yoshiko Kobayashi
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    Hello, Yoshico, welcome to ELU! Thank you for writing. However, this does not answer the question. Please give some time to taking the tour. When you have enough reputation, you will be able to use the comment box. Cheers! – Conrado Jul 29 '20 at 03:05