Words That Crossed the Pond

To those of you who have ever wondered which of two spellings is correct—inquiry or enquiry? insure or ensure? honor or honour? cream or creme (or crème)? sorbet or sherbet?—here is the explanation (if not the solution).

Often, both such spellings are correct—somewhere in the world. The reason for the confusion is that, with globalization (or globalisation), we Americans do a lot more mingling with our British-English-speaking cousins and our French-speaking cousins and cousines than we used to. In most cases, spelling variations are simply the result of evolved differences between English-language spellings in the U.S. and in the U.K. (or Hong Kong, or Singapore, or India) or between similar words in the U.S. and France or . . . wherever.

In the case of some of these spellings that have  “crossed the pond,”  it’s likely not only the result of people’s traveling more than they used to, but also of certain restaurateurs’ and marketers’ considering British English or French to be more “refined” or “elegant” than plain old American English. Interestingly, these same restaurateurs and marketers often favor spellings that are not correct in any language, “Paree,” for example, for the approximate phonetic spelling of Paris (pronounced in French). Some even add an accent aigu over the first e in “Paree,” (Parée)—to create a word that no French person would ever for a minute recognize as the name of his nation’s capital—because they think accent marks are “elegant.” Words that have either crossed the pond on their own—or been dragged over, kicking and screaming, against their will—are too numerous to list here, but the ones mentioned above give you the idea.

“But, but . . . [Ms. Picky hears a sputtering protest from the back of the room and sees a hand waving frantically] there are differences in actual meaning!”

In fact, there are not, or, rather, there were not, not originally. As marketers searched for justification for their spelling aberrations, they invented differences in meaning:

“Hmmm, well, ensure means, uh, ‘to make certain,’ and insure is like, you know, life insurance!”

“And sorbet is made with water, but sherbet is made with milk . . . or is it the other way around?”

In fact, marketers and manufacturers were forced to create distinctions in meaning in sets of differently spelled words—distinctions that had never existed in the first place—simply to justify their having adopted the variant spellings. . . . As time went on, some of their distinctions became more widely accepted than others, and now, for example, sorbet is more likely not to contain milk than sherbet or sherbert. 

But don’t count on it.