British and American English

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This article examines the differences between British and American English in the areas of vocabulary, spelling and phonology.

Vocabulary

Lexical differences are:

British American
aerodrome airport
aeroplane airplane
aeroport airport
autumn autumn/fall
bonnet hood
boot (car) trunk (car)
braces suspenders
car-park parking lot
chips (French/french) fries [1]
cockerel (cock) rooster
condom condom/rubber (vulgar slang)
crisps chips/potato chips
curtains drapes/draperies/curtains
drawing room living room
dustbin trash can/garbage can
dustman garbage collector/garbageman
film movie [2]
flat flat/apartment[3]
(Association) football soccer
lift elevator
full stop period
lorry/truck[4] truck
nappy diaper
off-licence liquor store
pants underwear/underpants
pavement sidewalk
petrol gasoline/gas
railway railroad
road road/pavement
rubber[5] eraser
rug blanket
saloon sedan
spanner wrench
sweets candy
sweetshop candy store
tea (sometimes) supper, dinner
tin can
torch flashlight
trousers trousers/pants
windscreen windshield
wing fender

Spelling

Spelling differences include:

British American
aluminium aluminum[6]
grey gray
judgement judgment
practise practice

Suffixes

The most striking differences between the spelling of AmE and BrE are in these suffixes (the accents show stress and pronunciation, see English phonemes):

British - American -
-ence defénce -ense defénse
lîcence noun[7] lîcense
offénce offénse[8]

Notes

  1. Though strictly, these are two different shapes, chips being broader than fries.
  2. ‘Movie’ is nowadays normal in BrE when talking Hollywood.
  3. Increasingly heard in British English; in San Francisco, California, at least, a city of small, shared buildings, both "flat" and "apartment" are used, mostly interchangeably. Purists, however, distinguish between the two: an "apartment" is in a building that has a shared main entrance; a "flat" has its own outside entrance door.
  4. British trucks are traditionally small, and pulled, typically on rails.
  5. A pitfall for British visitors to America, where 'rubber' is a vulgar term for a condom.
  6. Also pronounced differently: ['æləmɪnjəm] in British English, [ə'lu:mɪnəm] in American.
  7. lîcense is the verb in BrE, cf. licensêe in both. Mostly -ence is used in both, as with fénce; but sénse, dénse and suspénse in both.
  8. In American sporting contexts, one may hear óffénse and dêfénse.

See also