For nearly all speakers, some words from the lexical set have diverged into a separate group, so words like next and text no longer rhyme. In this scenario, the word next has a raised vowel, which is distinguished from the low-mid vowel in text. The raised vowel occurs unpredictably in a handful of words like leg, dead and head; other words like fed and neck do not have this vowel. For many speakers, it is equivalent to the vowel in , in which case dead rhymes with made, but not with fed. Taking this into account, speakers with the complete met–mat merger will distinguish lag from leg, but not the words lad and led . The raised vowel can also occur in red, making red and read (as in I have read the book) non-homophones.
For nearly all speakers, some words from the lexical set have diverged into a separate group, so words like next and text no longer rhyme. In this scenario, the word next has a raised vowel, which is distinguished from the low-mid vowel in text. The raised vowel occurs unpredictably in a handful of words like leg, dead and head; other words like fed and neck do not have this vowel. For many speakers, it is equivalent to the vowel in , in which case dead rhymes with made, but not with fed. Taking this into account, speakers with the complete met–mat merger will distinguish lag from leg, but not the words lad and led . The raised vowel can also occur in red, making red and read (as in I have read the book) non-homophones.