The /ʊ/ sound in English
/ʊ/ is the short OO (FOOT) — a vowel of English. Here is how to make it with your mouth, what usually goes wrong, which words carry it, and the sounds it gets confused with.
How to make the /ʊ/ sound
Pull the tongue high and back but keep it lax, with light, loose lip rounding — short and relaxed.
Practise it on its own before you put it in a word: hold the position, make the sound, then release. Once it is stable in isolation, drop it into the example words below and keep the same mouth shape — most of the difficulty of an English sound disappears the moment your tongue and lips are physically in the right place.
The mistake learners make with /ʊ/
Tensing it into /uː/ so "full" sounds like "fool"; the lips should be only loosely rounded.
If that description sounds like you, work through the contrast pairs further down: hearing the difference reliably always comes before producing it reliably.
Words with the /ʊ/ sound
Start with the classic three — book, put, could — then work through real words that contain /ʊ/. Every word below has a full pronunciation page with audio and a sound-by-sound breakdown.
/ʊ/ versus the sounds it gets confused with
These are the sounds nearest /ʊ/ in the mouth, and the ones that swallow it when a learner is not careful. Learn each pair as a pair:
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uːPush the tongue high and back and round the lips into a tight, forward circle; hold it tense and long. Say “book” (/ʊ/) and “food” (/uː/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
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ʌKeep the tongue central and slightly low with a relaxed, neutral mouth — like a stressed, fuller version of the schwa. Say “book” (/ʊ/) and “cut” (/ʌ/) back to back until the two stop blurring together.
Questions about /ʊ/
- How do you pronounce the /ʊ/ sound?
- Pull the tongue high and back but keep it lax, with light, loose lip rounding — short and relaxed.
- What words have the /ʊ/ sound?
- book, put, could, would, should, good, book, full, could — all contain /ʊ/.
- What is /ʊ/ called?
- /ʊ/ is the short OO (FOOT). It is a vowel in the English sound system.
Stop looking words up one at a time
One sound at a time is slow. PHONO puts the IPA above every word of whatever you are reading — in your browser, in a PDF, in any app — the moment you select it. An offline pronunciation dictionary, US and UK audio, one hotkey.