How to pronounce moss in American English

IPA /mɑs/ Syllables 1 · mahs Stress 1st syllable
MAHS
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Americans pronounce moss as MAHS (/mɑs/). You'll hear it in sentences like "The moss covered the rocks near the stream".

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "moss".

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

m/m/

Press your lips together. Air flows through your nose. Vocal cords vibrate.

Mouth position for /m/ as in MAN
ah/ɑ/

Relax your lips and drop your jaw significantly. The tongue tip lightly touches behind the bottom front teeth and the back part of the tongue presses down a little to create more dark space in the back of the mouth.

Mouth position for FATHER Vowel
s/s/

Place your tongue tip near the roof of your mouth behind your top teeth. Push air through the narrow gap. No voicing.

Mouth position for /s/ as in SUN
In real conversation

Hear "moss" in the wild.

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

"The moss covered the rocks near the stream."
dhuh MAHS KUH·verd dhuh RAHKS NEER dhuh STREEM
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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

Is the American pronunciation of "moss" 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 "MAHS" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.

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