I have always pronounced it r-out-er, for two reasons:
1. It has the same spelling as the woodworking router (not ironclad though, considering this is English we are talking about).
2. Its function. It is a router, ie a thing which routes some other thing.

Americans tend to pronounce is as "r - out - er", the same way as they pronounce route "r - out" Brits and a few other nationalities tend to pronounce is as "rooter" as we pronounce "route" as root.

Simple, eh?

There is nothing to debate.

A router (r-out-er) routs but a router (r-oo-ter) routes

For goodness sake it's simple.

OK, and how do you pronounce a rowboat

The answer to all these is: it depends.

There's this thing in language called context, and what you do is pronounce or read words - that are spelt the same but have different meaning - according to the context.

Simple, like I said.

A lot of humour depends on these words and the interesting ways they can be used 'out of context' although to my mind, a pun is just another legitimate context.

One day I was on route to root out a new router when I was rerouted due to a router malfunction at the traffic signal in front of the router factory. So I borrowed a router to route out a piece of root to make a rowboat to get home by an alternate route. Have I gotten to the root of the matter?

For goodness sake it's simple. :rolleyes:

root is not a verb it is a noun, rout is a verb (to rout around in my bag, to rout the enemy)

This is also wrong it should be:
"So I borrowed a router to rout out a piece of root ..."

At last corrct use of root, hurrah !


An amusing paragraph I enjoyed that, thanks Carolrayden.

My pigs root, do your pigs rout?

And while were on the subject:
Is Amish pronounced AH-mish or AIM-ish?

well pigs are illiterate I guess, so we can't hold it against them. My pigs squeek more than they rout, specially at breakfast time!

But ok I concede (I don't like it but) root and rout are both allowed, and root is probably the more common usage.

But the context still tells you how to pronounce the word and what meaning it has, which is the argument here.

Well Amish is a name, and it's owner will tell you how it should be pronounced. Either is plausible, but I would argue Amish as it's spelt (short sounding A), is the correct pronounciation.