"How now brown cow" () is a phrase used in

elocution Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone as well as the idea and practice of effective speech and its forms. It stems from the idea that while communication is symbolic, sounds are final and compelli ...

teaching to demonstrate rounded vowel sounds. Each "ow" in the phrase represents the

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

/aʊ/. English orthography also uses the homophonic spelling "ou" to represent this diphthong in words like "noun" and "cloud". The use of the phrase "how now brown cow" in teaching elocution can be traced back to at least 1926. The phrase ''how now'' itself is an archaic greeting or interrogative expression.

References

Greeting words and phrases {{phonetics-stub