Difference in pronunciation between 'warship' and 'worship'?

I came across these words together in a text, and I was wondering whether they are pronounced the same way. 'War' is actually pronounced as 'wor', so I'm not entirely sure.

When I pronounce them, I do not hear a difference, but I'm not a native English speaker. Could anyone perhaps shed some light on whether the two words are pronounced differently?

Solution 1:

I'm sitting here saying the two words to myself and marveling that I never noticed that similarity in pronunciation before. :)

The difference is all in the "or."

In worship, the "or" is pronounced more as "ur" by most Americans. We say it as "wurship."

Warship is pronounced more the way it looks: "wawrship," with the mouth opening a bit wider on the "a."

Accent is on the first syllable in both words.

Solution 2:

I'd more or less agree with the above answer, apart from the part about the difference between English and American pronunciations.

Dictionary.com has the two pronounced as /ˈwɔrˌʃɪp/ [wawr-ship] for warship, and /ˈwɜrʃɪp/ [wur-ship] for worship. These are about how I'd expect them to sound as a British English speaker.

Merriam-Webster suggests \'wər-shəp\ or \'wòr-shəp\ for worship. I'm not quite sure about either of those.

Solution 3:

The 'a' in Warship is like the 'a' in Law. It is a sound that is hard for a non English speaker to pronounce, try making 'law' and 'low' sound different, they should sound very different and this is part of the same issue.

The 'or' in Worship is like 'err' in "to err on the side of caution", or the mechanical sound that is associated with spinning, 'whirr', as in "The machine whirred past".

Solution 4:

Warship : wôrˌSHip ( more like Wor-Ship )

Worship: wərSHəp ( more like Wer-Ship )

Solution 5:

I'm pretty sure, when I was a kid in Toronto, that we pronounced the word worship like "warship", as in, a ship of war. I'm not sure I have any way to prove that.