@yvanspijk

The phoneme 'ʊ' is that short uh and it's unfortunate that the description for English uses words with 'oo' rather than unambiguous words like 'lug', 'but' and 'multiply'.

English is hard enough to explain as it is. And it remains that Worcester is a weird word. As it happens I think the Etymology is wrong as well.

I think Vertis and ceastre evolved into Wercester. We still have an existing Roman Wall.