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.
How to pronounce tissues in American English
TIH·shooz
Start here
Americans pronounce tissues as TIH-shooz (/ˈtɪʃuz/). Stress falls on the first syllable — keep everything else short and quick. You'll hear it in sentences like "The autoimmune disease causes the body to attack its own tissues" or "Proteins are essential for the structure and function of body tissues" — more examples below.
Now you try.
Record yourself saying "tissues" and play it back. The mic stays on your device — nothing's uploaded.
Sound by sound
Every sound in "tissues".
2 syllables, 5 sounds. Tap a syllable to jump to its row, then explore each sound's mouth shape and how it's made.
ih/ɪ/
Drop your jaw slightly with relaxed lips. Touch the tongue tip behind the bottom front teeth and arch the top-front toward the roof.
sh/ʃ/
Flare your lips and lift the mid-front tongue close to the roof of your mouth. Blow air through without voicing.
oo/u/
Round your lips into a tight circle. Let your tongue rest in the middle of your mouth, slightly raised.
z/z/
Same position as S, but add vocal cord vibration. Feel the buzz.
In real conversation
Hear "tissues" in the wild.
Click any sentence to see the full breakdown — every link, every reduction, every flap-T.
"Proteins are essential for the structure and function of body tissues."
PROH·teenz er uh·SEHN·shuhl fer dhuh STRUHK·cher and FUHNGK·shuhn uhv BAH·dee TIH·shooz
"The autoimmune disease causes the body to attack its own tissues."
dhee ah·toh·ih·MYOON duh·ZEEZ KAH·zuhz dhuh BAH·dee tuh uh·TAK ihts ohn TIH·shooz
Find another
Looking for a different word or sentence?
Search the entire library
/
Press / anywhere to focus the search box.
Watch out
Common pronunciation mistakes in American English.
The textbook way isn't wrong — it's just not how anyone actually says it.
01
Stressing the wrong syllable.
Stress falls on the first syllable, not the others. Stretch TIH — keep everything else short and quick.
tih·SHOOZ→TIH·shooz
Questions
Questions people ask about this.
How is "tissues" stressed in American English?
Stress falls on the first syllable — say "TIH" with a longer, fuller vowel and keep every other syllable short and quick. The respell "TIH-shooz" marks the stressed syllable in capitals so the rhythm is easy to read at a glance.
Is the American pronunciation of "tissues" 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 "TIH-shooz" reflects the casual American form; British dictionaries typically print a citation form with crisper consonants and different vowel choices.
Stop reading about "tissues". Start saying it.
SayWaader is the AI pronunciation coach for American English. Practice 5 minutes a day. Get a 5-axes accent assessment. Sound like you live here.