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In modern-day usage, color is the more usual American spelling and colour the British, but there's more to it than that. The word derives from the Latin coloris, and thus color more accurately reflects the origin. Colour came by way of the French influence from couleur, which, of course, was itself derived from Latin.

So although many Brits (myself excepted, naturally! ) tend to look upon color as a case of "ignorant Americans corrupting the language" the truth is that both versions were once used here. Over time, color came to be the preferred spelling in America, thanks in part to Mr. Noah Webster and his famous dictionary, while colour came to be the preferred form in England.

The same applies to favor vs. favour, neighbor vs. neighbour, etc. There are inconsistencies in standard accepted British spellings though, e.g. honour, honoured, honouring, but honorary.

A similar situation exists with "zee" vs. "zed" for the last letter of the alphabet. Although most people in England think of "zee" as being of American origin, both were in common use here during the 17th century.

Many spellings, grammatical constructions and usages which are regarded as "Americanisms" here today are, in fact, the older British forms, such as the use of gotten, another "Americanism" which is frequently criticized in Britain.

The -ize vs. -ise issue is relatively recent in linguistic terms. Again, I've met many people here who regard realize, recognize, etc. as being "ugly American corruptions," but the British forms realise, recognise etc. didn't really take hold until well into the 20th century. The 1930 King's English Dictionary still lists the -ize forms as standard with -ise shown as acceptable variants in the addendum.

Although -ise became the more common spelling in recent decades, the -ize ending was still preferred by some publishers until just a few years ago, even if not today (including Pitman and several other "heavy duty" technical publishing houses). The original -ize endings most accurately reflect the Greek suffix -izo, while, once again, the -ise forms came by way of French (e.g. réaliser = to realize).

Accumulator was widely used in England at one time, especially to refer to the individual lead-acid cells which were used to run the filaments of tubes in home radios. Back in the day, every radio shop would take in accumulators for recharging.

On battery vs. cell, strictly speaking a battery is a combination of two of more cells. In everyday speech though, battery is often used loosely to refer to either a single cell or a proper battery of multiple cells.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 12-24-2006).]