Americans spell differently… here’s why

Noah Webster is known as the ‘Father of American scholarship and education’ and his name is synonymous with American dictionaries i.e. Merriam-Webster. One of his ideas was to simplify the spelling of English words and some of these alternative spellings caught on.

This is why the USA spells ‘colour’ as color, ‘tyre’ as tire and ‘neighbour’ as ‘neighbor’. He also has a thing for the letter ‘Z’ and liked to put it everywhere he could. This is why the USA spells ‘organise’ as organize, ‘criticise’ as criticize and ‘emphasise’ as emphasize.

He also had a lot of spelling ideas that didn’t prove as popular and never caught on including ‘tung’ for tongue, ‘wimmin’ for women and ‘sizerz’ instead of scissors.

Born in 1758, Webster was an American revolutionary, recruited by no less than Alexander Hamilton to become the editor of the Federalist Party newspaper. One of the ways he sought to establish American independence was to replace the words that came from England with a distinctly American spelling, many of which survive to this day.