A fork of Rural Dictionary
ghoti is what you write down to confuse someone. Pronounced 'fish', it utilises the 'gh' from 'cough', the 'o' from 'women' and the 'ti' from 'action' to become a confusing little bugger. If you are writing to a posh person, be sure to start a conversation about fish, and say 'ghoti' several times. It means fish, too.
Dear Fishmongers,
The ghoti you sell is weird and unhygenic! That ghoti made me sick twice. I hate your ghoti!
This word is pronounced 'fish' through manipulation of atypical linguistic rules.
It uses the gh from laugh, the o from women and the ti from nation.
Ghoti is a bastard word that only has application in written context, and is primarily used by people trying to be smartasses.
a word used to make fun of english spelling.
"gh" sometimes makes a /f/ sound as in tough
"o" sometimes makes a /ɪ/ sound as in women
"ti" sometimes make a /ʃ/ sound as in nation
put it all together and ghoti is pronounced /fɪʃ/.
what people don't realize is that this doesn't even make sense with english's normal phonotactic rules. "gh" is never /f/ word-initially and "ti" is never /ʃ/ without a vowel after it. so this doesn't work.
person 1: ghoti is pronounced fish english spelling bad hurhur
person 2: that's not how english spelling works.