How to pronounce route

Short answer: in American English, both are correct: ROOT (/ruːt/), the same as root and rhyming with boot, or ROWT (/raʊt/), rhyming with out. Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Dictionary.com, Cambridge and Oxford's American dictionary list both, with ROOT first. For British English, Cambridge, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries and the Collins English Dictionary give only ROOT.

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Is it ROOT or ROWT?

Both, depending on where you are:

Americans are split. The Harvard Dialect Survey, an online survey by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder completed in 2003, asked about route as in "the route from one place to another". Of 11,137 respondents, 29.99% rhymed it with hoot and 19.72% with out. The biggest group, 30.42%, used both. Another 15.97% said ROOT for the noun and ROWT for the verb, and 2.50% did the opposite. Anyone could take the survey, so it isn't a random sample. On its maps, the hoot answers are densest in the Northeast and the out answers in the Midwest.

Highway names, as in Route 66, get no special pronunciation in Cambridge or Oxford. The song is different. The Road Trip USA guide (Moon Travel Guides) credits Nat King Cole's 1946 hit recording of "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66" with making ROOT the way to sing it, and later versions kept it.

Router splits too. For the network device, Cambridge, Oxford and Collins give British speakers ROO-tuh (/ˈruːtə/). For Americans, Cambridge, Oxford's American dictionary and American Heritage (computer sense) give ROW-ter (/ˈraʊtər/), but Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com and Oxford Learner's Dictionaries (North American) list ROO-ter first. The woodworking router is ROW-ter in every dictionary that lists it, British or American: it's a different word, from rout, "to hollow out".

Our advice: in the US, keep the version you grew up with; both are standard. If you're unsure, ROOT is the safe default: every American dictionary above lists it first, and it's the only British form. Learning British English? Say ROOT.

Why is route pronounced two ways?

Route came into Middle English from Anglo-French rute, from Vulgar Latin rupta (via), literally "broken way": a passage forced through, from Latin rumpere, "to break". Merriam-Webster dates the first known use in English to the 13th century. In French, route still has an "oo" sound.

The spelling allows both readings. The letters ou say "oo" in soup and routine, but "ow" in out and in rout, a crushing defeat, which American Heritage traces to the same Latin word as route.

British English once had both too. The Oxford English Dictionary, as quoted by the Grammarphobia blog, says ROWT dropped out of standard British English in the 19th century but stayed widespread in North America. So ROWT isn't an American invention.

How to say route step by step

1. Start with an English R. Pull the tip of your tongue back so it doesn't touch the roof of your mouth, and round your lips slightly.
2. Choose your vowel. For ROOT, say the long "oo" of boot, with rounded lips. For ROWT, glide from "ah" to "oo", as in out and how.
3. Finish with a T. Touch the ridge behind your top teeth with the tip of your tongue, and don't add a vowel after it: route has one syllable.

In American English, a T between vowels often turns into a quick, D-like tap, as in routing and router (Cambridge writes /ˈraʊ.t̬ɚ/). French speakers already have the ROOT vowel from French route; only the R changes, from the back of the mouth to the tip of the tongue.

Practice in a sentence

• Which route is faster, the highway or the coast road?
• Our router sends the data by the fastest route.
• Is it ROOT or ROWT? In the US, you'll hear both.

Related words, with American pronunciations from the Cambridge Dictionary:

More words that split English speakers: either, data and aunt (American vs British), and crayon (Americans among themselves).

What does route mean?

A route is a way from one place to another, a fixed path that a bus or delivery driver follows, or a way of reaching a goal. In the US, Route is also part of the names of numbered roads. U.S. Route 66, for example, was established in 1926 and ran from Chicago to Santa Monica. As a verb, route means to send something a particular way, including data between computer networks: the job of a router. Don't confuse it with root: you root for a team when you want it to win.

Sources

• Merriam-Webster — route and router; American Heritage — route, router and rout
• Dictionary.com — route, router and rout; Collins — route and router
• Cambridge Dictionary — route, router, rout, root, root for, routine, en route, reroute, soup, out
• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — route, route (American English), router (network), router (tool), router (American English)
• Wiktionary — route
• Harvard Dialect Survey — route, Bert Vaux and Scott Golder (archived)
• Grammarphobia — Routing slips, August 2011
• Road Trip USA (Moon Travel Guides) — the Route 66 song; Wikipedia — (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 and U.S. Route 66