Re:Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
by tomjakubowski on Monday April 17, 2023 @01:19PM
(#35603699)
"tough", "rough", "though" and "borough" all come from Old English, without any French influence. The wackiness in pronouncing "ough" is sadly not predictable from any set of rules and as you'd probably expect varies between dialects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)