You're not a moron, just speaking the wrong dialect. The British English pronunciation of borough and compounds using it like Scarborough in Yorkshire and Loughborough (roughly Luff'-bruh) have a schwa as their final syllable, quite distinct from the sound in dough, toe, sew, mow, Po ...*
The definitive list (southern British English):
- Though - rhymes with so
- Through - homophone with threw
- Cough, Gough - rhyme with off
- Tough, enough - rhyme with buff
- Borough and its compounds, thorough - a short schwa
- Hiccough - rhymes with up. I'd normally use the spelling "hiccup", though.
- Bough - rhymes with cow (there exists also a surname pronounced as (3) above)
- Ought, nought, fought, bought - rhyme with caught, taut, court, sort
- Lough - homophone with loch
* left in to illustrate why response nodes are a Bad Thing when the node they respond to disappears. Watch and learn.