I always bear the word as “flaws.” No confusion here.
Some dialects, perhaps. There’s zero difference in the vowel of “hot,” “boss,” “draw,” “drought,” and “dross” for me (West Coast-Southwest mutt mix).
I’d venture to say most dialects or the most common dialects of American English (especially given as the default examples for “hot” and “floss” given above have different vowels.) I’ve never heard “drought” pronounced with the same vowel as the others, though. The dictionaries I’ve checked only give one pronunciation, and that’s with the diphthong of “ow” as in “cow.”
edit: Crap, meant to add. What you’re describing is the cot-caught merger, which is a common feature of some American dialects. So far as I can dig up, 60% of American speakers preserve the different vowel sounds. Not sure how “drought” fits into this, though.
I always heard flaws, never floss. But if we learned anything from Termiantor 2, it’s that robots can be great parents
Blah, my bad on that. I having a little fun with hot + draw = drought, and managed to forget that no, it’s not pronounced that way.