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American and British English spelling differences
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American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences.
The spelling systems of Commonwealth countries, for the most part, closely resemble the British system. In Canada, however, while most spelling is "British", many "American" spellings are also used. Additional information on Canadian and Australian spelling is provided throughout the article.
he early 18th century, English spelling was not standardized.
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American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences.
The spelling systems of Commonwealth countries, for the most part, closely resemble the British system. In Canada, however, while most spelling is "British", many "American" spellings are also used. Additional information on Canadian and Australian spelling is provided throughout the article.
Historical origins
In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardized. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), whereas many American English spellings follow Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828.
Webster was a strong proponent of spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. Many spelling changes proposed in the US by Webster himself, and in the early 20th century by the Simplified Spelling Board, never caught on. Among the advocates of spelling reform in England, the influences of those who preferred the Norman (or Anglo-French) spellings of certain words proved decisive. Subsequent spelling adjustments in the UK had little effect on present-day US spelling, and vice versa. While in many cases American English deviated in the 19th century from mainstream British spelling, on the other hand it has also often retained older forms.
Spelling and pronunciation
In a few cases, essentially the same word has a different spelling which reflects a different pronunciation.
As well as the miscellaneous cases listed in the following table, the past tenses of some irregular verbs differ in both spelling and pronunciation, as with smelt (mainly UK) versus smelled (mainly US): see American and British English differences: Verb morphology.
| UK | USA | Notes |
|---|
aeroplane | airplane | Aeroplane, originally a French loanword, is the older spelling. According to the OED, "[a]irplane became the standard U.S. term (replacing aeroplane) after it was adopted by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1916. Although A. Lloyd Jones recommended its adoption by the BBC in 1928, it has until recently been no more than an occasional form in British English." In the British National Corpus, aeroplane outnumbers airplane by more than 7:1. The case is similar for UK aerodrome and US airdrome, although both of these forms are now obsolescent. The prefixes aero- and air- both mean air, the first coming from the Greek word a??a?. Thus, for example, the first appears in aeronautics, aerostatics and aerodynamics, and so on, where the second suffix is a Greek word, while the second occurs (invariably) in aircraft, airport, airliner, airmail, etc. where the second suffix is an English word. In Canada, Airplane is used more commonly than aeroplane, although aeroplane is not unknown, especially in parts of French Canada (the current French term is, however, avion — aéroplane designating in French 19th-century flying machines. Both Canada and Australia use aerodrome as a technical term. | aluminium | aluminum | The spelling aluminium is the international standard in the sciences (IUPAC). The American spelling is nonetheless used by many American scientists. Humphry Davy, the element's discoverer, first proposed the name alumium, and then later aluminum. The name aluminium was finally adopted to conform with the -ium ending of metallic elements. Canada as US, Australia as UK. | arse | ass | In vulgar senses "buttocks" ("anus"/"wretch"); unrelated sense "donkey"/"idiot" is ass in both. Both forms are found in Canada and Australia ("ass" to a lesser extent in the latter; "arse" may be used in North America as a "non-vulgar replacement"). | barmy | balmy | In sense "slightly insane", "crazy", "foolish", which has limited meaning in American English. Both forms originated in 19th century England from other senses: barmy meant "frothing [as of beer]"; balmy means "warm and soft [as of weather]". British barmy is generally misheard in North America as balmy. | behove | behoove | | bogeyman | boogeyman | boogie' to the UK ear. | carburettor | carburetor | | charivari | shivaree, charivari | In the US, where both terms are mainly regional, charivari is usually pronounced as shivaree, which is also found in Canada and Cornwall, and is a corruption of the French word. | coupé | coupe | For a two-door car; the horse-drawn carriage is coupé in both; unrelated "cup"/"bowl" is always coupe. In the US, the E is accented when used as a foreign word. | eyrie | aerie | Rhyme with weary and hairy respectively. Both spellings and pronunciations occur in the US. | fillet | fillet, filet | Meat or fish. Pronounced the French way (approximately) in the US. | furore | furor | Furore is a late 18th-century Italian loan that replaced the Latinate form in the UK in the following century, and is usually pronounced with a voiced e. Canada as US, Australia has both. | grotty | grody | Clippings of grotesque; both are slang terms from the 1960s. | haulier | hauler | Haulage contractor; haulier is the older spelling. | moustache | mustache | In the US, according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, the British spelling is an also-ran, yet the pronunciation with second-syllable stress is a common variant. | mum(my) | mom(my) | Mother. Mom is sporadically regionally found in the UK (West Midlands English); some British dialects have mam, and this is often used in Northern English, Irish and Welsh English. In the US region of New England, especially in the case of the Boston accent, the British pronunciation of mum is often retained, while it is still spelled mom. Canada has mom and mum; in Australia, mum is used. | naivety | naïveté | naïveté is a minor variant, used about 20% of the time in the British National Corpus; in the US, naivete and naiveté are marginal variants, and naivety is almost unattested. | pernickety | persnickety | Persnickety is a late 19th-century North American alteration of the Scottish word pernickety. | quin | quint | Abbreviations of quintuplet. | scallywag | scalawag | In the US (where the word originated, as scalawag), scallywag is not unknown. | snigger | snicker | | speciality | specialty | In British English the standard usage is speciality, but specialty occurs in the field of medicine, and also as a legal term for a contract under seal. In Canada, specialty prevails; in Australia both are current. | titbit | tidbit | | |
Latin-derived spellings
-our, -or
Most words ending in unstressed -our in the United Kingdom (e.g., colour, flavour, honour, armour, rumour) end in -or in the United States (i.e., color, flavor, honor, armor, rumor). Where the vowel is unreduced, this does not occur: contour, paramour, troubadour, are spelled thus everywhere.
Most words of this category derive from Latin non-agent nouns having nominative -or; the first such borrowings into English were from early Old French and the ending was -or or -ur. After the Norman Conquest, the termination became -our in Anglo-French in an attempt to represent the Old French pronunciation of words ending in -or, though color has been used occasionally in English since the fifteenth century. The -our ending was not only retained in English borrowings from Anglo-French, but also applied to earlier French borrowings. After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original -or termination; many words once ending in -our (for example, chancellour and governour) now end in -or everywhere. Many words of the -our/-or group do not have a Latin counterpart; for example, armo(u)r, behavio(u)r, harbo(u)r, neighbo(u)r; also arbo(u)r meaning "shelter", though senses "tree" and "tool" are always arbor, a false cognate of the other word. Some 16th and early 17th century British scholars indeed insisted that -or be used for words of Latin origin (e.g. color) and -our for French loans; but in many cases the etymology was not completely clear, and therefore some scholars advocated -or only and others -our only.
Webster's 1828 dictionary featured only -or and is generally given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the US. By contrast, Dr Johnson's 1755 dictionary used the -our spelling for all words still so spelled in Britain, as well as for emperour, errour, governour, horrour, tenour, terrour, and tremour, where the u has since been dropped. Johnson, unlike Webster, was not an advocate of spelling reform, but selected the version best-derived, as he saw it, from among the variations in his sources: he favoured French over Latin spellings because, as he put it, "the French generally supplied us." Those English speakers who began to move across the Atlantic would have taken these habits with them and H L Mencken makes the point that, "honor appears in the Declaration of Independence, but it seems to have got there rather by accident than by design. In Jefferson’s original draft it is spelled honour." Examples such as color, flavor, behavior, harbor, or neighbor scarcely appear in the Old Bailey's court records from the 17th and 18th century, whereas examples of their -our counterparts are numbered in thousands. One notable exception is honor: honor and honour were equally frequent down to the 17th century, Honor still is, in the UK, the normal spelling as a person's name.
Derivatives and inflected forms. In derivatives and inflected forms of the -our/or words, in British usage the u is kept before English suffixes that are freely attachable to English words (neighbourhood, humourless, savoury) and suffixes of Greek or Latin origin that have been naturalized (favourite, honourable, behaviourism); before Latin suffixes that are not freely attachable to English words, the u can be dropped (honorific, honorist, vigorous, humorous, laborious, invigorate), can be either dropped or retained (colo(u)ration, colo(u)rize), or can be retained (colourist). In American usage, derivatives and inflected forms are built by simply adding the suffix in all environments (favorite, savory, etc.) since the u is absent to begin with.
Exceptions. American usage in most cases retains the u in the word glamour, which comes from Scots, not Latin or French. "Glamor" is occasionally used due to the spelling reform of other -our words to -or. It should be noted that the adjective "glamorous" omits the first U. Saviour is a common variant of savior in the US. The British spelling is very common for "honour" (and "favour") on wedding invitations in the United States. The Space Shuttle Endeavour has a u as it is named after Captain Cook's ship, HMS Endeavour.
The name of the herb savory is thus spelled everywhere, although the probably related adjective savo(u)ry, like savour, has a u in the UK. Honor (the name) and arbor (the tool) have -or in Britain, as mentioned above. As a general noun, rigour has a u in the UK; the medical term rigor (often ) does not. Words with the ending -irior, -erior or similar are spelled thusly everywhere and have never had a "u", for example inferior or exterior.
Commonwealth usage. Commonwealth countries normally follow British usage. In Canada -or endings are not uncommon, particularly in the Prairie Provinces, though they are rarer in Eastern Canada. In Australia, -or terminations enjoyed some use in the 19th century, and now are sporadically found in some regions, usually in local and regional newspapers, though -our is almost universal. The name of the Australian Labor Party, founded in 1891, is a remnant of this trend.
-re, -er
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