American accents that have not undergone the "cot–caught" merger (the lexical sets and ) have instead retained a – split: a 17th-century split in which certain words (labeled as the lexical set) separated away from the set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent set into a merger with the ("caught") set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the "cot" vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the vowel in the following environments: before many instances of , , and particularly (as in "Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often," etc.), a few instances before (as in "strong, long, wrong"), and variably by region or speaker in "gone", "on", and certain other words.