Oxford English v American English

[whole diary]

[SDS]

Temporary ticket office closure

We regret that due to lack of staff, this ticket office will be closed from dd-mmm-yy to dd-mmm-yy, and apologize for the inconvenience this will cause.
snip

thought it was apologise anyway?

[inspector_blakey]

Debatable, that one

The Oxford English Dictionary comes down on the side of -ize as the preferred usage in British English in the majority of cases. Although it "looks" American (and of course is the standard spelling in American English) and this seems utterly counterintuitive, it is actually perfectly correct British English too. This has nothing to do with us supposedly adopting American spellings either: we aren't, in fact if you read anything from the late 19th/early 20th centuries you'll find -ize all over the place!

Other less definitive dictionaries though would have you believe that -ise is the standard spelling.

I'll put my anorak away now.

[TerminalJunkie]

The OED^▸ (Oxford English Dictionary) prefers -ize as this suffix has its origin in Greek, while the -ise suffix has come from the original Greek via French.

[JayMac]

Well, it's all Greek to me! 

[inspector_blakey]

The OED^▸ (Oxford English Dictionary) prefers -ize as this suffix has its origin in Greek, while the -ise suffix has come from the original Greek via French.

Ahh. That would explain it. And also explain why the OED comes down firmly against the use of "z" in words like analyse...

[Mookiemoo]

In fact most American spellings and phrases were used here - Shakespeare referred to the fall rather than autumn

It's just that when we shipped them off on the mayflower they exported the language at the time including the spellings - they were an isolated nation from the rest of the English world - ie england - we adopted some euro spellings colour for example and metre where as they kept meter - end of - ours adapted to Europe - the us English is what we used to speak so is possibly more correct

I refuse however to accept burglarized

[JayMac]

...and for me it's a pavement, not a sidewalk!

[Chris from Nailsea]

I refuse however to accept burglarized

Hmm.

How about 'burglariously' - used in the eighteenth century, in this country: see http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17300513-41&div=t17300513-41&terms=burglariously#highlight

CfN. 

[johoare]

hhm.. car boot versus trunk.. they might have both evolved after the mayflower.. well I think 

[TerminalJunkie]

The word 'boot' is thought to be derived from 'boot-locker', a small storage area on horse-drawn carriages that the coachman would sit on.

'Trunk' is probably best explained with a picture:
http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/ModelAFord/1931_Model_A_Ford_Phaeton-sept24a.jpg

[johoare]

ok then.. another one.. queue versus line? 

[inspector_blakey]

Weirdly, a "boot" here is actually a wheel clamp. The first time I saw signs saying something along the lines of "Illegally parked vehicles will be booted" I had a strange image in my head of a traffic warden (sorry, "meter maid") walking along a line of cars and kicking the ones that didn't have a valid permit.