How to pronounce either

Short answer: both are correct. EE-ther (/ˈiː.ðɚ/) is the usual American pronunciation: Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Dictionary.com, Cambridge and Oxford Learner's Dictionaries list it first for American English. For British English, Cambridge, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries and Collins list EYE-ther first, said EYE-thuh (/ˈaɪ.ðə/) without the R. All of them list the other version too, and neither has the same two forms: NEE-ther and NY-ther.

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Is it EE-ther or EYE-ther?

Both. American and British dictionaries simply put them in a different order:

Polls show the same split. In a 1988 poll of 275 British speakers for the phonetician John Wells's Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, nearly nine in ten preferred EYE-ther. In a survey of 395 Americans by his student Yuko Shitara, published in 1993, 84% preferred EE-ther. Both panels included many language professionals and students, so neither was a random sample. And the less common version isn't a mistake: Dictionary.com says EYE-ther is heard occasionally in the US, mostly from educated speakers and on network radio and television.

The split even made it into a song. In 1937 George and Ira Gershwin wrote "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" for the film Shall We Dance, where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers introduced it. The song plays on pairs like EE-ther and EYE-ther, NEE-ther and NY-ther, and the two ways to say tomato and potato.

So which either pronunciation should you use? In the US, EE-ther is the safer default; in Britain, EYE-ther. Every dictionary above accepts both, so the real rule is to be consistent: pick one and say neither the same way.

Why is either pronounced two ways?

Either is a native English word. It comes from Old English ǣgther, short for ǣghwæther, "each of two, both", and Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to before the 12th century. Wiktionary traces EE-ther to one Middle English form; where EYE-ther came from is less clear.

As late as 1777, EE-ther and NEE-ther were still the main pronunciations in England. According to Dictionary.com, both versions existed in British English, and in the 19th century EYE-ther became the dominant one in standard British speech. In 1926 the usage writer H. W. Fowler wrote that it was still displacing EE-ther in educated speech and would probably win; the 1965 revision of his guide said it had almost completely replaced EE-ther.

Americans mostly kept EE-ther. Dictionary.com calls American EYE-ther a recent borrowing from British speech, not a leftover from colonial times, helped by the spelling: ei says EYE in height and stein. But it says EE in seize and receive, so the letters can't settle the question.

How to say either step by step

1. Pick your vowel: EE as in see, or EYE as in eye. Cambridge, Oxford and Merriam-Webster list only these two, not AY-ther.
2. Stress the first syllable: EE-ther or EYE-ther, never ee-THER.
3. Make a buzzing th, as in this and mother: put the tip of your tongue lightly between your teeth and use your voice. With the quiet th of think, you'd be saying ether, a different word.
4. Finish the word: with an R in American English (-ther), with a short "uh" and no R in British English (-thuh).

The th is where many learners slip: they swap it for a D or a Z ("EE-der", "EE-zer"). The Z version is especially common among speakers of French, German and Mandarin.

Practice in a sentence

• You can sit on either side of the table.
• I don't like coffee, and my sister doesn't either.
• EE-ther or EYE-ther? Either is fine, and neither is wrong.

Then practice the ei spelling and both th sounds. American pronunciations, from the Cambridge Dictionary:

Other everyday words change across the Atlantic too: see how to pronounce data, route and aunt. For another word with two correct versions, see niche.

What does either mean?

Either means one or the other of two: take either road. It can also mean each of two, or both, as in trees on either side of the river. With or, it introduces a choice: either tea or coffee. After a negative, it works like also or too: I don't know either. The "one or the other" meaning dates from the late 13th century; the older "each of two, both" goes back to Old English.

Sources

• Merriam-Webster — either and neither
• Cambridge Dictionary — either and neither; Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — either and either (American English)
• Collins — either; American Heritage Dictionary — either
• Dictionary.com — either, pronunciation note and origin
• Wiktionary — either and neither; Online Etymology Dictionary — either
• Yuko Shitara — Survey of American pronunciation preferences, UCL, 1993 (archived copy); John Wells — Age grading in English pronunciation preferences, 1995, and LPD polls (archived copy)
• Ben Yagoda — "Eye-ther", Not One-Off Britishisms, 2023, on the 1777 dictionary and Fowler
• H. W. Fowler — Modern English Usage, 1926, either
• Wikipedia — Let's Call the Whole Thing Off and Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩