Do you say 'wash' or 'warsh?' Here's where the pronunciation comes from

Kevin Warsh testifies during his nomination hearing to be a member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026. Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

Where did "warsh" originate?

There's a leading theory among linguists about the origins of that "r": the migration of Scotch-Irish people to South Midland U.S. starting at the end of the 18th century. They were a group who moved from Scotland to Northern Ireland, specifically the Ulster province — and they're known for their use of "strong r's," or being "rhotic," Reed said.

"Those folks were super 'r-full,'" he said.

The addition of the new letter stretches across parts of Appalachia, from Baltimore to Southern Ohio, up to Michigan and all the way over to Washington state.

"These days you will hear older speakers in those areas still saying [warsh]" said Robin Dodsworth, a professor in the linguistics program at North Carolina State University. However, in "the Midlands area where it all may have started, it is not so frequent anymore," she said.

Reed, the University of Alabama professor, said linguists can't know for sure where the accent came from, so the leading theory isn't a "magic bullet" or "the secret sauce," but it is definitely plausible.

The written version of the pronunciation appears in late 19th century literature. O'Conner and Kellerman, who write the blog "Grammarphobia," found a paper by the philologist Frederick Thomas Elworthy, The Dialect of West Somerset, read at an 1875 meeting of the Philological Society in London. Elworthy wrote: "I've a yeard em zay he don't make nort of a leg o' mutton, and half a peck o' cider to warsh-n down way."

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They also found an 1897 poem about a doctor in Indiana by James Whitcomb Riley reading, "warshed his hands."

But how did an "r" find its way into a "r-less" word?

"'Rs' are just a mess," said Nicole Holliday, an acting associate professor of linguistics at University of California, Berkeley.

The "r" sound that we use in American English is extremely rare, Holliday said. In fact, fewer than 1% of the world's languages use the "r" in the same way American English speakers do, she said.

Another reason: Wash is an old English term that is around 1,500 years old, Holliday said. Words that we say more often are more susceptible to different pronunciations, and because people are so familiar with it, "our brains will fill in the gaps," she said.

The pronunciation "warsh" makes sense when you break the sounds down. The process is called "coarticulation," or when one sound changes to be more like the sound next to it, said Dodsworth, the North Carolina State professor. In the case of wash, the "sh" sound influences the vowel before it.

Another reason the "r" could have snuck in is that our lips round for "wah," "sh" and "rrr," Dodsworth said. By the time the "sh" sound comes around in the word wash, the tongue is touching the roof of the mouth, and the "r" can slip into the word using the same rounded lips, she said.

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One phonetician friend told Reed: "When you speak, you're basically just moving hunks of meat around in the air."

"Vowels are naturally squishy, squirrely, movey things because there's just your tongue in your mouth," Reed said.

Once this pronunciation started, it "just sort of caught on," Reed said. Language is passed down from parents to children to grandchildren, he said, and when children go to school they may even start by spelling wash as "warsh."

The enduring legacy of 'warsh'

Reed, who studies the speech variations of the Appalachian region, uses the concept "rootedness." It's the local attachment people place onto pronunciations and certain words, he said.

"[With] a pronunciation like 'warsh,' it's always the stories about someone's aunt or their grandfather or their grandmother, their mama or their papa," Reed said.

"These pronunciations and these words stick around because they are meaningful," he continued. They're indicative of home.

In a park in southeast Baltimore, near where filmmaker John Waters shot his 1980s classic Hairspray, which features the classic Baltimore accent, locals and transplants alike offered their perspectives on the accent.

Cary Griffin, 70, lives in Washington D.C. but visits her 8-month-old grandson in Baltimore. She remembers her grandmother, from Richmond, Va., going to do the "warsh."

Adam Cook, 29, is originally from California and moved to Baltimore four years ago. He immediately noticed the receptionist's strong accent at his dentist's office. Ed Morman, 79, who has lived in Baltimore for 39 years, said he actually heard the accent more when he lived in Philadelphia and Seattle. He does not say "warsh" because of his own New York accent, he said.

Others felt strongly about the matter: "I do say warsh!" said Lisa Molina, a 53-year-old Baltimore native, sitting on her stoop on a sunny day. Her mother says it — so naturally, that's how Molina says it.

Richard Spindler, 54, who lives in the same building as Molina, agreed that's the only right way to say wash.

The accent has seeped into popular culture. There's John Waters' movies, but there's also Luke Bryan's country song, "Rain is a Good Thing" where he sings "Start warshin' all our worries down the drain." The late U.S. Sen. John McCain said "Warshington." An early 2000s Washington Post columnist even fielded commentary about the pronunciation from readers. Both Spindler and Molina particularly appreciated Kathy Bates' Baltimore accent in the show "American Horror Story."

"She hung in the bars and learned," Spindler said, nodding his head in approval.

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Still, the "warsh" pronunciation is on its way out. Dodsworth says it has to do with population mobility. Social media has nothing to do with it, she said.

Holliday thinks of language as a living organism. It will change.

"You just got to let it breathe," she said.