Definition of received pronunciation in US English:
received pronunciation
(also received standard)
nounrəˈˌsiv(d) prəˌnənsiˈeɪʃən
The standard form of British English pronunciation, based on educated speech in southern England.
Example sentencesExamples
- Gone is the Doctor's received pronunciation and upper class background.
- Standard English at that time was British English with received pronunciation.
- Someone commented on my yokel version, which for ages I have thought was the received pronunciation of the word.
- The Doctor is a scientist and an intellectual, and a lot of people seem to think you can only be those things if you speak with received pronunciation which, of course, is rubbish.
- She was still in the midst of the old world of received pronunciation and velvet smoking jackets.
- She speaks in breathless, giggly received pronunciation.
- All were more or less informed by the desire to distance Shakespeare in performance from the perceived colonial baggage of received pronunciation, and stage English.
- Clare Francis speaks with the sort of received pronunciation you might expect from a former yachtswoman brought up in the Home Counties.
- You have to relish the language but you don't force it into received pronunciation because that would kill it.
- It's an observation which could have come straight from the mouth of a terrorist, but because it's uttered in the received pronunciation of Mr Loyn's BBC tones, no one even noticed it until I picked him up on it.
- We should remember that Gladstone had a strong Merseyside accent, and that received pronunciation is largely an artefact of the broadcast era.
- But Himalaya is the received pronunciation, certainly in the UK, so I didn't want to sound as though I was being too clever.