How to pronounce stops in American English

IPA /stɑps/ Syllables 1 · stahps Stress 1st syllable

STAHPS

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Americans pronounce stops as STAHPS (/stɑps/). You'll hear it in sentences like "Start the party after the alarm stops" or "She plays defense and stops the opposing team from scoring" — more examples below.

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Sound by sound

Every sound in "stops".

1 syllable, 5 sounds. Explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.

s/s/

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

t/t/

Touch the tip or front edge of your tongue to the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. Keep your jaw relaxed. Stop the air, then release with a puff.

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.

p/p/

Press your lips together to stop the air, then release. No vocal cord vibration.

s/s/

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

In real conversation

Hear "stops" in the wild.

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

"She plays defense and stops the opposing team from scoring."

shee PLAYZ DEE·fehns and STAHPS dhee uh·POH·zuhng TEEM fruhm SKOR·uhng

"Start the party after the alarm stops."

START dhuh PAR·tee AF·ter dhee uh·LARM STAHPS

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Questions

Questions people ask about this.

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