Pronunciation of "lorry", "worry" and "sorry"

I grew up in NW UK saying lurry (for lorry) but my more 'northern' boyfriend and his family insisted it was lorry so I changed my pronunciation.

Pronunciations practically always differ regionally. I don't say lor-ee and sor-ee. I say lah-ree and sah-ree with a really low in the throat o like the doctor makes you say when he says, "go awh". But it still rhymes with sorry and not worry for me.

Why do they not rhyme with worry? Well, English has lots of word pairs with identical vowels and different pronunciations. Like bead/head, have/save, blow/wow, watch/hatch to name only a few.

Etymology or word origins can be a big influence. Sorry evolved from Old English sarig and worry evolved out of wyrgan, so they didn't always have the same vowels.

Rhymezone

They should rhyme due to the spelling, not because the sound that the words make differs slightly. They, almost rhyme

There is a case that "lurry" is the original pronunciation.

The Online Etymological Dictionary gives this origin: "a truck; a long, flat wagon," 1838, British railroad word, probably from verb lurry "to pull, tug"(1570s), of uncertain origin. Meaning "large motor vehicle for carrying goods" is first attested 1911."

According to Wikipedia, meanwhile, before the railway "lorry" is attested in 1838 there was a horse-drawn "lorry", a low flat trailer for transporting other vehicles. Both of these were also referred to as "lurries" in the early period and this pronunciation seems to have been preserved in English dialect.

"Lurry" is certainly used here in Stockport by older and more conservative locals, but I first heard "lurry" from my grandmother (b. 1907 Cockfield, County Durham) referring to the horse drawn vehicle used to take her on a Sunday school picnic as a girl. She distinguished between that and the motorised "lorry".

I must point out though that the "u" of "lurry" as pronounced in the Teedale dialect of that generation is not the same as in Greater Manchester now; it is not as rounded as Yorks-Lancs /ʊ/ but not as open as the Southern English /ʌ/ I'd guess, but I am not a phonetician. I do know, however, that at the time the horse-drawn lorry was being transformed into the steam drawn lorry the English "u" was in a state of flux. My guess is that the spelling of "lorry" first recorded as a railway term in 1838 was originally an approximation to a dialectal pronunciation. The pronunciation "as spelled" has since become the norm.

I'm from Manchester and have always pronounced it Lurry as have my family and a number of my local friends. It’s always been the norm to me! However the younger generation and now even my daughter have started pronouncing it lorry (which always sounds scouse to me) Both are probably right depending where you come from and how old you are. As a middle aged Manc I will stick with Lurry ?