How to pronounce flew in American English

IPA /flu/ Syllables 1 · floo Stress 1st syllable

FLOO

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Americans pronounce flew as FLOO (/flu/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The bad bat flew over the wooden bed" or "We knew the bird flew through the new house" — more examples below.

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "flew".

1 syllable, 3 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.

f/f/

Lift your bottom lip to touch the very bottom of your top front teeth. Blow air through this contact point without voicing.

l/l/

Place the tip of your tongue against the alveolar ridge just behind your top front teeth, the same contact point as /t/, /d/, and /n/. The difference is what happens to the air: for /l/, you let it flow continuously around the <em>sides</em> of the tongue (that's why /l/ is called a lateral). Turn your voice on the whole time. Lips stay relaxed, no rounding or flaring. For the Dark L variant at the end of a syllable, also pull the back of the tongue up and back toward the soft palate.

oo/u/

Round your lips into a tight circle. Let your tongue rest in the middle of your mouth, slightly raised.

In real conversation

Hear "flew" in the wild.

Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.

"The bad bat flew over the wooden bed."

dhuh BAD BAT FLOO OH·ver dhuh WUU·duhn BEHD

"We knew the bird flew through the new house."

wee NOO dhuh BURD FLOO throo dhuh NOO HOWS

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

Is the American pronunciation of "flew" different from British English?

American English uses different vowel shapes, a relaxed retroflex R, and connected-speech tricks like flap-T and glottal-stop T that British Received Pronunciation generally avoids. The respell "FLOO" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.