How to pronounce February

Short answer: both FEB-roo-air-ee (/ˈfebrueri/) and FEB-yoo-air-ee (/ˈfebjueri/) are standard American English. Merriam-Webster and the American dictionaries of Oxford and Cambridge list FEB-yoo-air-ee first; American Heritage and Dictionary.com list FEB-roo-air-ee first. British dictionaries (Cambridge, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, Collins) give FEB-roo-uh-ree (/ˈfebruəri/), and Longman also lists a British version with a Y. In the Y version, a Y sound replaces the first R, as in January.

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Is it FEB-roo-air-ee or FEB-yoo-air-ee?

Both. Here's how the dictionaries list each February pronunciation:

Merriam-Webster says the version without the R is heard more often, though "all of these variants are in frequent use and widely accepted." American Heritage notes that usage writers prefer FEB-roo-air-ee, but FEB-yoo-air-ee is far more common and can't be called incorrect. Dictionary.com calls the Y version standard.

Surveys show the Y gaining ground. In 1992–93, Yuko Shitara, a student of the phonetician John Wells in London, analyzed 395 questionnaires from Americans: 64% preferred FEB-yoo- and 36% FEB-roo-. Younger respondents chose the Y more often, and New Englanders especially preferred the R. In Wells's 1998 poll of 1,932 British speakers for the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 61% chose the R and 39% the Y (weighted by age). The Y won 13% of those born in 1933 or earlier, but 64% of those born in 1974 or later. Neither poll used a random sample.

So which should you say? Either one: Merriam-Webster, American Heritage and Dictionary.com list both as standard. In Britain, all four British dictionaries we checked list FEB-roo-uh-ree first.

Why is February pronounced "Febuary"?

Say Feb-ru-ar-y slowly: the two R's are only a syllable apart, and repeating a sound that close is awkward, so speakers tend to change one. Linguists call this dissimilation, and Merriam-Webster says it happens regularly in February. The first R of surprise and governor can drop out the same way.

Then January finishes the job. It has the same ending with no R, so FEB-yoo-air-ee simply copies JAN-yoo-air-ee. American Heritage credits January's influence, and Merriam-Webster notes that the Y isn't an intruder: English often says a U after a consonant as "yoo", as in annual. Not every word gets this pass, though: Merriam-Webster labels library without its first R nonstandard.

Why does the spelling keep both R's? Because the word is Latin: Februarius, the month of the Februa, a Roman purification festival. Old English used the Latin name, but around 1200 English also borrowed French feverier as feverer. In the 1300s and 1400s, writers respelled the word to match Latin, and that spelling stuck.

The word was a mouthful even in Latin. The Appendix Probi, a list of spelling mistakes probably written in Rome in the 300s AD, says to write Februarius, not Febrarius. The simpler form won in speech: it's the ancestor of Italian febbraio, French février and Spanish febrero.

How to say February step by step

1. Stress the first syllable, FEB, with the short e of bed.
2. Pick your second syllable: "roo", going straight from the B into the R, or "yoo", as in January.
3. Finish with "air-ee" in American English. British dictionaries give a weak "uh-ree", or just "ree".

If you speak Spanish or Italian, watch the stress: febrero (/feˈbɾeɾo/) and febbraio (/febˈbra.jo/) stress the second syllable, but English stresses FEB.

Practice in a sentence

• February is the shortest month of the year.
• Is it FEB-roo-air-ee or FEB-yoo-air-ee? Either is fine.
• We moved here in January and found jobs in February.

Then try words with the same ending or with two R's close together. American pronunciations, from the Cambridge Dictionary:

More words that trip people up: colonel, salmon, Worcestershire and mischievous, or our list of 60 hard words to pronounce.

What is February?

February is the second month of the year, with 28 days, or 29 in a leap year. The earliest Roman calendar treated winter as a time without months; tradition credits King Numa Pompilius with adding January and February around 713 BC, and February stayed the last month until about 450 BC. In the United States, it's Black History Month.

Sources

• Merriam-Webster — February, usage guide; library
• American Heritage Dictionary — February, usage note; Dictionary.com — February, pronunciation note
• Cambridge Dictionary — February, main and American entries, and January, library, surprise and governor; Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — February and February (American English)
• Collins — February; Longman — February; Wiktionary — February, Februarius, Febrarius, Febuary, febrero and febbraio
• Etymonline — February; Wikipedia — February, Dissimilation and Appendix Probi; Latin Wikisource — Appendix Probi
• Yuko Shitara — Survey of American pronunciation preferences, UCL, 1993 (archived copy); J. C. Wells — Age grading in English pronunciation preferences, ICPhS 1995
• J. C. Wells — Pronunciation preferences in British English: a new survey, 1999, and 1998 survey, concise findings (archived copies)