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Color is not uniquely American. It was used in England since before America’s discovery and is, in fact, more etymologically correct - it comes from the Latin w
by Amezarak 7y ago
Color is not uniquely American. It was used in England since before America’s discovery and is, in fact, more etymologically correct - it comes from the Latin word “color”. :)
The more French-influenced colour was more common in England, and obviously eventually did totally win out.
There are generally very similar stories for most “American” spellings.
- wirrbel 7y agoIirc it's "Couleur" in french.
- Amezarak 7y agoIt is now, maybe, but not when the borrowing took place.
- toyg 7y agoColore in Italian. Adding random "u"s to Latin words is a very French thing.
- Anarch157a 7y agoPortuguese abbreviated it to "cor", but we keep the longer version on the verb "colorir" (to color).
- AstralStorm 7y agoAnd in Polish we have both the Latin import "kolor" (Phonetic k in place of c) and Slavic variant "barwa". (Sounded with v English sound as w per phonetic Latin and forward trill r) Polish is weird like that.
- astura 7y agoNoah Webster was (among other things) a spelling reformer, he didn't "invent" all of his spellings but he researched and deliberately chose them based on his ideas about language and politics and advocated for their use. It was a deliberate effort, not something that just happened.
- k_sze 7y agoWhich makes me curious, what did the Anglo-Saxons use as the word for “color”, before the onset of French influence?
- unclenoriega 7y agoLooks like it was hue (as hiw). https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=hue https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=hue
- DonaldFisk 7y agoAlso blēo(h) and dēah.