(English "o" is tons of fun-- of the 22 vowel sounds listed on the English orthography page on Wikipedia, only two can't generally have the letter "o" involved.)
More than half of my life lived in English-speaking countries does not help quite enough to avoid a migraine with this one.
Doesn't it though?
Otherwise I agree, there’s no difference between the two in my dialect.
Wiktionary suggests that it can be a homophone with bad in some dialects though, so perhaps that’s what the author was thinking of?
Neat example. What's also interesting is that it's hard to parse visually too, so it slows down reading.
I apologise that none of the following words rhyme; rough, cough, plough, dough, lough, hiccough.