Creating an account only takes 20 seconds, and doesn’t require any personal info.

If you’ve got one already, please log in.🤝

⟨oa⟩

From Teflpedia

⟨oa⟩ is a vowel digraph that commonly occurs in English, consisting of O and A.

⟨oar⟩ and ⟨oal⟩ are treated separately.

Examples[edit | edit source]

Phonemes Example words Notes
ɢᴏᴀᴛ vowel phoneme approach, boat, coach, cocoa, coat, coast, float, foam, goat, load, loan, oats, road, roast, throat, toad, toast, etc.
ɢᴏᴀʟ vowel phoneme coal, foal, goal, shoal, etc.
ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ vowel phoneme abroad, broad
ᴘᴀʟᴍ vowel as /wɑː/ quinoa Spanish-to-English loan.


Like other spellings, this also occurs across syllable boundaries, in which case it’s not a digraph.

  • /əʊ.ə/: boa, coalition, coalesce, Noah, protozoan, psychoanalysis
  • /əʊ.ɑː/: coati, koala
  • /əʊ.æ/: coagulate, proactive, radioactive
  • /əʊ.eɪ/: oasis