I know what the word "furore" means. I also know it's a variant spelling of "furor". "furore" seems to be a BrE spelling. I've never spoken this word despite how often I've seen it in both its forms. According to the dictionary the two versions aren't just spelling differences but represent different pronunciations:
furore
(fjʊˈrɔːrɪ)
American Heritage Dictionary
and
(fyo͝o-rô′rĭ)
Collins English Dictionary
and
/ˌfjʊ(ə)ˈrɔːri/
Oxford Living Dictionaries
(More or less the same pronunciations)
vs
furor
(ˈfyʊər ɔr, -ər) FEW-roar (AmE)
American Heritage Dictionary
and
(fyo͝or′ôr′, -ər) FEW-roar (AmE)
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary
and
/ˌfjʊ(ə)ˈrɔː/ few-RAW (BrE) accent on second syllable
Oxford Living Dictionaries
Generally the voice inside my head says "fuhrer" when reading "furore" in:
The furore came two months after two sisters started a petition asking
the Metropolitan Museum…
The pronunciations for "fuhrer" I have are:
(fyo͝or′ər) (standard American)
American Heritage Dictionary
or
/ˈfjʊərə/ (standard British)
Oxford Living Dictionaries
Is saying "fuhrer" when spelt "furore" wrong? Also I'm confused about the fact that in Oxford Living Dictionaries "furor" is pronounced with stress on second syllable.
I'd also be interested in knowing how people from different places pronounce these, if anyone happens to know.
Best Answer
The word originates from Latin fŭror, -ōris (accusative form fŭrōrem) which is the source of present-day French fureur (pronounced /fyʁœʁ/; a homophone in French to "führer") and Italian furore (pronounced /fuˈrore/).
Many French words with -eu- in the last syllable have variants with -ou- in other dialects or older forms of the language. I don't actually know if that's the case for this word, but it seems to have entered English with the spelling "ou".
The earliest OED citations are for a derivative of the French form:
In Middle English, "ou" in words from French is thought to have been pronounced /uː/. In monosyllabic words, such as hour and flour, Middle English /uːr/ generally corresponds to modern English /aʊə(r)/, but in the disyllables like savo(u)r and labo(u)r the stress ended up on the first syllable, and as a result the vowel in the second syllable is not pronounced as /aʊə(r)/ (compare adjectives ending in -ous, which have a reduced vowel in the last syllable).
The spelling "-or" in words like this is at least partly from Latin influence; it may also have been facilated by the stress pattern mentioned in the preceding paragraph (Noah Webster notoriously promoted the use of the spelling "-or" in place of word-final unstressed "-our", even in some words that were not from Latin like neighbo(u)r).
Maybe in part due to the influence of the "-or" spelling, the word furor is commonly pronounced in modern English with an unreduced "o" sound in the second syllable. The OED entry for furor (first published 1898) gives "Brit. /ˈfjʊərɔː/, /ˈfjɔːrɔː/, U.S. /ˈfjʊˌrɔ(ə)r/, /ˈfjuˌrɔ(ə)r/". But pronunciations with a reduced vowel are noted in other dictionaries: AHD "(fyo͝o´rôr´, -ər)" and MW "\ ˈfyu̇r-ˌȯr , -ər \".
The Italian form has also been taken into English, however. The OED's first citation is from 1790, with more from the 19th century:
The OED entry for furore (first published 1898) gives the pronunciation as "/f(j)ᵿˈrɔːreɪ/ /f(j)ᵿˈrɔːri/ /ˈfjʊrɔː/".
Obviously, there has been some influence between these theoretically distinguishable words.
The spelling furore and the associated unique pronunciations appear to now be considered chiefly British. Collins has a "regional note" saying "in AM, use furor"; the American Heritage Dictionary defines furore as "Chiefly British Variant of furor".
The pronunciation variant /ˌfjʊ(ə)ˈrɔː/ that you noted in Oxford Dictionaries is interesting. I would guess that it comes from interpreting the final "e" in the spelling of "furore" as a marker of stress.
Can "furor(e)" = "führer"? Yes, but some people don't like this pronunciation
Whether or not furor sounds the same as führer/fuhrer/fuehrer depends on the pronunciations that you use. For the latter word, MW gives " \ ˈfyu̇r-ər , ˈfir- \" and Collins gives "E ˈfjurər ; fyo̅orˈər" which overlaps with one of the possible pronunciations of furor.
However, some prescriptive peevers like Charles Harrington Elster (author of The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker) apparently think the pronunciation of furor with an reduced vowel is substandard (or in Elster's words, not a "cultivated pronunciation"):
Elster goes on to suggest that the pronunciation of furor with a reduced vowel may actually have been influenced by the pronunciation of Führer, but I'm somewhat skeptical of this explanation. In any case, Elster concludes the entry by saying
So I guess the Charles Harrington Elsters of the world might consider it "wrong" to pronounce furore the same way as fuhrer.