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The "oa" in the word "broad" is pronounced like the words "or" or "awe". In phonetic symbols that is ɔː . However in all other examples I can think of it is pronounced like the "oe" in "toe". Or in phonetic symbols, əʊ . For example, in goat, toast, oat and so on.

Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English brád , identical with Old Frisian brêd , Old Saxon brêd (Middle Dutch breet -d- , Dutch breed ), Old High German (Middle High German and modern German) breit , Old Norse breið-r , (Swedish, Danish bred ), Gothic braiþ-s < Old Germanic *braido-z : no related words are known even in Germanic, except its own derivatives

Although perhaps not directly relevant to the question, where it makes a difference I am talking about British English pronunciation. So broad is pronounced /brɔːd/ , both or and awe are pronounced /ɔː/, toe is pronounced /təʊ/, goat is pronounced /ɡəʊt/ and so on and so forth.

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    It depends whether you count oar or not.
    – Chris H
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 7:47
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    The pronunciation presumably comes from the language of origin. It would probably be a better question to ask why it was spelled with oa.
    – Barmar
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 8:59
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    @Barmar: broad comes from Old English brád. For comparison, goad comes from Old English gád and load comes from Old English lád. Since Old English was spelled more or less phonetically, I would guess that they rhymed in Old English. So here the pronunciation may not come from the language of origin.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 12:06
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    @PeterShor Yeah, I suspect that for some reason the pronunciation of this word shifted. But it wasn't part of a general trend, it was totally alone.
    – Barmar
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 12:07
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    @tchrist I think you may be referring to US English. In British English they are both /ɔː/ . In US English it seems that "or " is pronounced /ɔ(ə)r/ where "awe" is pronounced /ɔː/ .
    – Simd
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 15:29

2 Answers 2

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First we must set aside oar, board etc. (i.e. where the oa is followed by r). Then there are no rhymes for broad in my Penguin rhyming dictionary that are spelt --oad and aren't derived from broad (/brɔːd/ according to Collins) itself. So there aren't any reasonably common words with that spelling and pronunciation in the last syllable.

Because that only eliminated words ending with broad's --oad, I tried something different -- generating lists of words containing oa and checking the pronunciation. OneLook's pattern matching dictionary fed with oa and the regex dictionary at http://www.visca.com/regexdict/ fed with .+oa[^r].* (i.e. 1 or more characters followed by "oa" then anything other than "r" and 0 or more characters -- not perfect but a decent approximation) give rather long lists. Scanning those lists I can't find anything to suggest that broad isn't unique -- there are unfamiliar words there but they don't look like they should be pronounced --or--.

Tl;dr: yes - I'm now waiting to be proved wrong.

Edit: note that some of the examples in this answer have a British English bias to them, the answer itself is unaffected

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    Broad /brɔd/ and board /bord/ no more rhyme than do cost /kɔst/ and coast /kost/. Scots voar from Norse vár meaning spring is /vɔr/.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 14:44
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    Collins online also gives oar /ɔː/, broad /brɔːd/, board /bɔːd/ and voar /vɔː/. Cost comes out as /kɒst/.
    – Chris H
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 14:58
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    I confess that /ɔr/ does not make much sense to me, which is why I would like a minimal pair to prove that it exists in English. The relevance to your answer is that you are claiming broad and board rhyme, and that seems quite wrong to me, since broad has a lax vowel and board a tense one using the traditional tense–lax contrast.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 15:16
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    I listened to both at Collins, and despite what they are writing, the speakers are clearly using a lax vowel in broad but a tense vowel in board. That means their transcription is wrong, since it does not match what the speakers are actually saying.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 15:20
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    @ChrisH Do questions/answers that have a US bias also have to indicate this I wonder?
    – Simd
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 15:40
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The original derived noun was "brede" from which the broad, not narrow, pronunciation came for broad. "Breadth" took place of "brede" in Middle English. Why the spelling changed to broad is unknown.

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    Hello, Yoshico, welcome to ELU! Thank you for writing. However, this does not answer the question. Please give some time to taking the tour. When you have enough reputation, you will be able to use the comment box. Cheers!
    – Conrado
    Commented Jul 29, 2020 at 3:05

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