Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography , the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British or Commonwealth English date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.
145-438: A plough or ( US ) plow (both pronounced / p l aʊ / ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame with a blade attached to cut and loosen the soil. It has been fundamental to farming for most of history. The earliest ploughs had no wheels; such
290-460: A PIE stem * blōkó- , which supposedly gave Old Armenian peɫem "to dig" and Welsh bwlch "crack", though the word may not be of Indo-European origin. The basic parts of the modern plough are: Other parts include the frog (or frame), runner, landside, shin, trashboard, and stilts (handles). On modern ploughs and some older ploughs, the mould board is separate from the share and runner, so these parts can be replaced without replacing
435-546: A French Jesuit who spent most of his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. According to current academic consensus, Jones's famous work of 1786 was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian , Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi . In 1818, Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated
580-677: A PIE homeland, the Kurgan and Anatolian hypotheses are the ones most widely accepted, and also the ones most debated against each other. Following the publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew, the original author and proponent of the Anatolian hypothesis, has accepted the reality of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic steppe towards Northwestern Europe. The table lists
725-571: A broken piece to be replaced. In 1833 John Lane invented a steel plough. Then in 1837 John Deere introduced a steel plough; it was so much stronger than iron designs that it could work soil in US areas previously thought unsuitable for farming. Improvements on this followed developments in metallurgy: steel coulters and shares with softer iron mould boards to prevent breakage, the chilled plough (an early example of surface-hardened steel), and eventually mould boards with faces strong enough to dispense with
870-490: A clumsy construction necessitated large plough-teams, and this meant that large areas of land had to be reserved as pasture. In China, where much less animal power was required, it was not necessary to maintain the mixed arable-pasture economy typical of Europe: fallows could be reduced and the arable area expanded, and a considerably larger population could be supported than on the same amount of land in Europe. The upper parts of
1015-691: A consonant followed by an unstressed -re (pronounced /ə(r)/ ). In modern American English, most of these words have the ending -er . The difference is most common for words ending in -bre or -tre : British spellings calibre , centre , fibre , goitre , litre , lustre , manoeuvre , meagre , metre (length) , mitre , nitre , ochre , reconnoitre , sabre , saltpetre , sepulchre , sombre , spectre , theatre (see exceptions ) and titre all have -er in American spelling. In Britain, both -re and -er spellings were common before Johnson's 1755 dictionary
1160-549: A conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as * wódr̥ , * ḱwn̥tós , or * tréyes ; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water , hound , and three , respectively. No direct evidence of PIE exists; scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method . For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot , padre and father , pesce and fish . Since there
1305-453: A detailed, though conservative, overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated by 1959. Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie gave a better understanding of Indo-European ablaut . From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became robust enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis , first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas , has become
1450-475: A distinctive set of Canadian English spellings is viewed by many Canadians as one of the unique aspects of Canadian culture (especially when compared to the United States). In Australia, -or endings enjoyed some use throughout the 19th century and in the early 20th century. Like Canada, though, most major Australian newspapers have switched from " -or " endings to " -our " endings. The " -our " spelling
1595-495: A emium , and a enigma . In others, it is kept in all varieties: for example, phoenix , and usually subpoena , but Phenix in Virginia . This is especially true of names: Aegean (the sea), Caesar , Oedipus , Phoebe , etc., although "caesarean section" may be spelled as "cesarean section". There is no reduction of Latin -ae plurals (e.g., larv ae ); nor where the digraph <ae>/<oe> does not result from
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#17327726241441740-466: A eon , an a emia , an a esthesia , c a ecum , c a esium , c o eliac , diarrh o ea , encyclop a edia , f a eces , f o etal , gyn a ecology , h a emoglobin , h a emophilia , leuk a emia , o esophagus , o estrogen , orthop a edic , pal a eontology , p a ediatric , p a edophile . Oenology is acceptable in American English but is deemed
1885-443: A field leaves a row of sods partly in the furrows and partly on the ground lifted earlier. Visually, across the rows, there is the land on the left, a furrow (half the width of the removed strip of soil) and the removed strip almost upside-down lying on about half of the previous strip of inverted soil, and so on across the field. Each layer of soil and the gutter it came from forms a classic furrow. The mould-board plough greatly reduced
2030-430: A hydraulic cylinder on each bottom. When an obstruction is encountered, the plough bottom hinges back and up in such a way as to pass over the obstruction, without stopping the tractor and plough. The bottom automatically returns to normal ploughing position as soon as the obstruction is passed, without any interruption of forward motion. The automatic reset design permits higher field efficiencies since stopping for stones
2175-627: A language. From the 1870s, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound laws have no exceptions, as illustrated by Verner's law , published in 1876, which resolved apparent exceptions to Grimm's law by exploring the role of accent (stress) in language change. August Schleicher 's A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages (1874–77) represented an early attempt to reconstruct
2320-691: A millennium. Major changes in design spread widely in the Age of Enlightenment , when there was rapid progress in design. Joseph Foljambe in Rotherham , England, in 1730, used new shapes based on the Rotherham plough, which covered the mould board with iron. Unlike the heavy plough, the Rotherham, or Rotherham swing plough consisted entirely of the coulter, mould board and handles. It was much lighter than earlier designs and became common in England. It may have been
2465-532: A minor variant of enology , whereas although archeology and ameba exist in American English, the British versions amoeba and archaeology are more common. The chemical haem (named as a shortening of h a emoglobin ) is spelled heme in American English, to avoid confusion with hem . Canadian English mostly follows American English in this respect, although it is split on gynecology (e.g. Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada vs.
2610-569: A mistaken etymology. The etymologically correct original spelling fetus reflects the Latin original and is the standard spelling in medical journals worldwide; the Oxford English Dictionary notes that "In Latin manuscripts both fētus and foetus are used". The Ancient Greek diphthongs <αι> and <οι> were transliterated into Latin as <ae> and <oe>. The ligatures æ and œ were introduced when
2755-403: A mouldboard plough: The share , landside and mould board are bolted to the frog, which is an irregular piece of cast iron at the base of the plough body, to which the soil-wearing parts are bolted. The share is the edge that makes the horizontal cut to separate the furrow slice from the soil below. Conventional shares are shaped to penetrate soil efficiently: the tip is pointed downward to pull
2900-406: A mounted point is somewhere between the last two types. Makers have designed shares of various shapes (trapesium, diamond, etc.) with bolted point and wings, often separately renewable. Sometimes the share-cutting edge is placed well in advance of the mould board to reduce the pulverizing action of the soil. The mould board is the part of the plough that receives the furrow slice from the share. It
3045-415: A plough body hits an obstruction are a cheaper overload protection device. Trip-beam ploughs are constructed with a hinge point in the beam. This is usually located some distance above the top of the plough bottom. The bottom is held in normal ploughing position by a spring-operated latch. When an obstruction is encountered, the entire bottom is released and hinges back and up to pass over the obstruction. It
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#17327726241443190-565: A plough was known to the Romans as an aratrum . Celtic peoples first came to use wheeled ploughs in the Roman era. The prime purpose of ploughing is to turn over the uppermost soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface while burying weeds and crop remains to decay . Trenches cut by the plough are called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is normally left to dry and then harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating soil evens
3335-532: A result, modern English orthography varies only minimally between countries and is far from phonemic in any country. In the early 18th century, English spelling was inconsistent. These differences became noticeable after the publication of influential dictionaries . Today's British English spellings mostly follow Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), while many American English spellings follow Webster's An American Dictionary of
3480-667: A suffix for agentive ( reader , user , winner ) and comparative ( louder , nicer ) forms. One outcome is the British distinction of meter for a measuring instrument from metre for the unit of length. However, while " poetic metre " is often spelled as -re , pentameter , hexameter , etc. are always -er . Many other words have -er in British English. These include Germanic words, such as anger , mother , timber and water , and such Romance-derived words as danger , quarter and river . The ending -cre , as in acre , lucre , massacre , and mediocre ,
3625-613: A thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis , the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations ,
3770-432: Is - /s/ for the noun and - /z/ for the verb). For licence / license or practice / practise , British English also keeps the noun–verb distinction graphically (although phonetically the two words in each pair are homophones with - /s/ pronunciation). On the other hand, American English uses license and practice for both nouns and verbs (with - /s/ pronunciation in both cases too). American English has kept
3915-422: Is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants ( p and f ) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language . Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support
4060-675: Is almost identical to British spelling, except in the word fiord (instead of fjord ) . There is an increasing use of macrons in words that originated in Māori and an unambiguous preference for -ise endings (see below). Most words ending in an unstressed ‑our in British English (e.g., behaviour , colour , favour , flavour , harbour , honour , humour , labour , neighbour , rumour , splendour ) end in ‑or in American English ( behavior , color , favor , flavor , harbor , honor , humor , labor , neighbor , rumor , splendor ). Wherever
4205-572: Is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's ) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song ) and accent . PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension , and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation . The PIE phonology , particles , numerals , and copula are also well-reconstructed. Asterisks are used by linguists as
4350-399: Is dropped for other derivations, for example, central , fibrous , spectral . However, the existence of related words without e before the r is not proof for the existence of an -re British spelling: for example, entry and entrance come from enter , which has not been spelled entre for centuries. The difference relates only to root words; -er rather than -re is universal as
4495-502: Is generally preferred over oe and often over ae , but oe and ae are sometimes found in academic and scientific writing as well as government publications (for example, the fee schedule of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan ) and some words such as palaeontology or aeon . In Australia, it can go either way, depending on the word: for instance, medieval is spelled with the e rather than ae , following
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4640-601: Is known as the Pacific Parlour car, not Pacific Parlor . Proper names such as Pearl Harbor or Sydney Harbour are usually spelled according to their native-variety spelling vocabulary. The name of the herb savory is spelled thus everywhere, although the related adjective savo(u)ry , like savo(u)r , has a u in the UK. Honor (the name) and arbor (the tool) have -or in Britain, as mentioned above, as does
4785-407: Is necessary to back up the tractor and plough to reset the bottom. This construction is used to protect the individual bottoms. The automatic reset design has only recently been introduced on US ploughs, but has been used extensively on European and Australian ploughs. Here the beam is hinged at a point almost above the point of the share. The bottom is held in the normal position by a set of springs or
4930-577: Is not practical on larger ploughs. When an obstruction is encountered, the spring release mechanism in the hitch permits the plough to uncouple from the tractor. When a hydraulic lift is used on the plough, the hydraulic hoses will also usually uncouple automatically when the plough uncouples. Most plough makers offer an automatic reset system for tough conditions or rocky soils. The re-set mechanism allows each body to move rearward and upward to pass without damage over obstacles such as rocks hidden below soil surface. A heavy leaf or coil-spring mechanism that holds
5075-539: Is personified and debating with another tool, the hoe , over which is better: a Sumerian disputation poem known as the Debate between the hoe and the plough . In older English, as in other Germanic languages , the plough was traditionally known by other names, e.g. Old English sulh (modern dialectal sullow ), Old High German medela , geiza , huohilī(n) , Old Norse arðr ( Swedish årder ), and Gothic hōha , all presumably referring to
5220-455: Is practically eliminated. It also reduces costs for broken shares, beams and other parts. The fast resetting action helps produce a better job of ploughing, as large areas of unploughed land are not left, as they are when lifting a plough over a stone. Manual loy ploughing was a form used on small farms in Ireland where farmers could not afford more, or on hilly ground that precluded horses. It
5365-523: Is presumably why the standard Han plough team consisted of two animals only, and later teams usually of a single animal, rather than the four, six or eight draught animals common in Europe before the introduction of the curved mould-board and other new principles of design in the 18th century. Though the mould-board plough first appeared in Europe in early medieval, if not in late Roman, times, pre-eighteenth century mould-boards were usually wooden and straight (Fig. 59). The enormous labour involved in pulling such
5510-427: Is responsible for lifting and turning the furrow slice and sometimes for shattering it, depending on the type of mould board, ploughing depth and soil conditions. The intensity of this depends on the type of mould board. To suit different soil conditions and crop requirements, mould boards have been designed in different shapes, each producing its own furrow profile and surface finish, but essentially they still conform to
5655-613: Is sometimes used. The ratio between -ise and -ize stood at 3:2 in the British National Corpus up to 2002. The spelling -ise is more commonly used in UK mass media and newspapers, including The Times (which switched conventions in 1992), The Daily Telegraph , The Economist and the BBC . The Government of the United Kingdom additionally uses -ise , stating "do not use Americanisms" justifying that
5800-714: Is standard worldwide and complection is rare. However, the adjective complected (as in "dark-complected"), although sometimes proscribed, is on equal ground in the U.S. with complexioned. It is not used in this way in the UK, although there exists a rare alternative meaning of complicated . In some cases, words with "old-fashioned" spellings are retained widely in the U.S. for historical reasons (cf. connexionalism ). Many words, especially medical words, that are written with ae/æ or oe/œ in British English are written with just an e in American English. The sounds in question are /iː/ or /ɛ/ (or, unstressed, /i/ , /ɪ/ or /ə/ ). Examples (with non-American letter in bold ):
5945-607: Is taught in schools nationwide as part of the Australian curriculum. The most notable countrywide use of the -or ending is for one of the country's major political parties, the Australian Labor Party , which was originally called "the Australian Labour Party" (name adopted in 1908), but was frequently referred to as both "Labour" and "Labor". The "Labor" was adopted from 1912 onward due to
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6090-429: Is the origin of the acre . The one-sided action gradually moved soil from the sides to the centre line of the strip. If the strip was in the same place each year, the soil built up into a ridge, creating the ridge and furrow topography still seen in some ancient fields. The turn-wrest plough allows ploughing to be done to either side. The mould board is removable, turning to the right for one furrow, then being moved to
6235-424: Is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language , and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during
6380-482: Is the usual form of the male given name, as a surname both the spellings Peter and Petre (the latter notably borne by a British lord ) are found. For British accoutre , the American practice varies: the Merriam-Webster Dictionary prefers the -re spelling, but The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language prefers the -er spelling. More recent French loanwords keep
6525-484: Is used in both British and American English to show that the c is pronounced /k/ rather than /s/ . The spellings euchre and ogre are also the same in both British and American English. Fire and its associated adjective fiery are the same in both British and American English, although the noun was spelled fier in Old and Middle English. Theater is the prevailing American spelling used to refer to both
6670-401: Is very short, except at the rear bottom of the plough. The heel or rear end of the rear land side may be subject to excessive wear if the rear wheel is out of adjustment, and so a chilled iron heel piece is frequently used. This is inexpensive and can be easily replaced. The land side is fastened to the frog by plough bolts. The frog (standard) is the central part of the plough bottom to which
6815-635: Is why they are called hand-ards . However, domestication of oxen in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilisation , perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BC, provided mankind with the draft power needed to develop the larger, animal-drawn true ard (or scratch plough). The earliest surviving evidence of ploughing has been dated to 3500–3800 BCE, on a site in Bubeneč , Czech Republic. A ploughed field, from c. 2800 BCE,
6960-536: The -meter suffix (from Ancient Greek - μέτρον métron , via French -mètre ) normally had the -re spelling from earliest use in English but were superseded by -er . Examples include thermometer and barometer . The e preceding the r is kept in American-inflected forms of nouns and verbs, for example, fibers , reconnoitered , centering , which are fibres , reconnoitred , and centring respectively in British English. According to
7105-560: The -ise form as an alternative. Publications by Oxford University Press (OUP)—such as Henry Watson Fowler 's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage , Hart's Rules , and The Oxford Guide to English Usage —also recommend -ize . However, Robert Allan's Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage considers either spelling to be acceptable anywhere but the U.S. American spelling avoids -ise endings in words like organize , realize and recognize . British spelling mostly uses -ise ( organise , realise , recognise ), though -ize
7250-687: The -ise form is preferred in Australian English at a ratio of about 3:1 according to the Macquarie Dictionary . In Canada, the -ize ending is more common, although the Ontario Public School Spelling Book spelled most words in the -ize form, but allowed for duality with a page insert as late as the 1970s, noting that, although the -ize spelling was in fact the convention used in the OED ,
7395-439: The -ise variation, once more common amongst older Canadians, is employed less and less often in favour of the -ize spelling. (The alternate convention offered as a matter of choice may have been due to the fact that although there were an increasing number of American- and British-based dictionaries with Canadian Editions by the late 1970s, these were largely only supplemental in terms of vocabulary with subsequent definitions. It
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#17327726241447540-450: The -re spelling in American English. These are not exceptions when a French-style pronunciation is used ( /rə/ rather than /ə(r)/ ), as with double entendre , genre and oeuvre . However, the unstressed /ə(r)/ pronunciation of an -er ending is used more (or less) often with some words, including cadre , macabre , maître d' , Notre Dame , piastre , and timbre . The -re endings are mostly standard throughout
7685-495: The Canadian Medical Association 's Canadian specialty profile of Obstetrics/gynecology ). Pediatrician is preferred roughly 10 to 1 over paediatrician , while foetal and oestrogen are similarly uncommon. Words that can be spelled either way in American English include a esthetics and arch a eology (which usually prevail over esthetics and archeology ), as well as pal a estra , for which
7830-524: The Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220), Chinese ploughs were made almost wholly of wood except for the iron blade of the ploughshare. These were V-shaped iron pieces mounted on wooden blades and handles. By the Han period the entire ploughshare was made of cast iron . These are the earliest known heavy, mould-board iron ploughs. Several advancements such as the three-shared plow, the plow-and-sow implement, and
7975-558: The Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages, and as early as 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic , Romance , Greek , Baltic , Slavic , Celtic , and Iranian . In a memoir sent to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux ,
8120-591: The Neogrammarian hypothesis : the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception. William Jones , an Anglo-Welsh philologist and puisne judge in Bengal , caused an academic sensation when in 1786 he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit , Greek , Latin , Gothic , the Celtic languages , and Old Persian , but he was not the first to state such a hypothesis. In the 16th century, European visitors to
8265-548: The OED , centring is a "word ... of 3 syllables (in careful pronunciation)" (i.e., /ˈsɛntərɪŋ/ ), yet there is no vowel in the spelling corresponding to the second syllable ( /ə/ ). The OED third edition (revised entry of June 2016) allows either two or three syllables. On the Oxford Dictionaries Online website, the three-syllable version is listed only as the American pronunciation of centering . The e
8410-1116: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ). The European Union 's style guides require the usage of - ise . Proofreaders at the EU's Publications Office ensure consistent spelling in official publications such as the Official Journal of the European Union (where legislation and other official documents are published), but the -ize spelling may be found in other documents. Proto-Indo-European language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )
8555-1055: The ard (scratch plough). The modern word comes from the Old Norse plógr , and is therefore Germanic, but it appears relatively late (it is not attested in Gothic ) and is thought to be a loan from one of the north Italic languages . The German cognate is "pflug", the Dutch "ploeg" and the Swedish "plog". In many Slavic languages and in Romanian the word is "plug". Words with the same root appeared with related meanings: in Raetic plaumorati "wheeled heavy plough" ( Pliny , Nat. Hist. 18, 172), and in Latin plaustrum "farm cart", plōstrum, plōstellum "cart", and plōxenum, plōximum "cart box". The word must have originally referred to
8700-407: The carruca heavy plough in Europe seems to have accompanied adoption of the three-field system in the later 8th and early 9th centuries, leading to improved agricultural productivity per unit of land in northern Europe. This was accompanied by larger fields, known variously as carucates , ploughlands, and plough gates. The basic plough with coulter, ploughshare and mould board remained in use for
8845-543: The theatre spelling. (The word "theater" in American English is a place where both stage performances and screenings of films take place, but in British English a "theatre" is where stage performances take place but not film screenings – these take place in a cinema, or "picture theatre" in Australia.) In the United States, the spelling theatre is sometimes used when referring to the art form of theatre, while
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#17327726241448990-519: The u has since been dropped: ambassadour , emperour , errour , governour , horrour , inferiour , mirrour , perturbatour , superiour , tenour , terrour , tremour . Johnson, unlike Webster, was not an advocate of spelling reform, but chose the spelling best derived, as he saw it, from among the variations in his sources. He preferred French over Latin spellings because, as he put it, "the French generally supplied us". English speakers who moved to
9135-435: The u : In American usage, derivatives and inflected forms are built by simply adding the suffix in all cases (for example, favorite , savory etc.) since the u is absent to begin with. American usage, in most cases, keeps the u in the word glamour , which comes from Scots , not Latin or French. Glamor is sometimes used in imitation of the spelling reform of other -our words to -or . Nevertheless,
9280-604: The ‑our/or group do not have a Latin counterpart that ends in ‑or ; for example, armo(u)r , behavio(u)r , harbo(u)r , neighbo(u)r ; also arbo(u)r , meaning "shelter", though senses "tree" and "tool" are always arbor , a false cognate of the other word. The word arbor would be more accurately spelled arber or arbre in the US and the UK, respectively, the latter of which is the French word for "tree". Some 16th- and early 17th-century British scholars indeed insisted that ‑or be used for words from Latin (e.g., color ) and ‑our for French loans; however, in many cases,
9425-441: The 17th and 18th centuries, whereas there are thousands of examples of their -our counterparts. One notable exception is honor . Honor and honour were equally frequent in Britain until the 17th century; honor only exists in the UK now as the spelling of Honor Oak , a district of London, and of the occasional given name Honor . In derivatives and inflected forms of the -our/or words, British usage depends on
9570-615: The 1970s, but had by then been overtaken by connection in regular usage (for example, in more popular newspapers). Connexion (and its derivatives connexional and connexionalism ) is still in use by the Methodist Church of Great Britain to refer to the whole church as opposed to its constituent districts, circuits and local churches, whereas the US-majority United Methodist Church uses Connection . Complexion (which comes from complex )
9715-478: The 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages , and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method ) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age , though estimates vary by more than
9860-743: The American National Theatre was referred to by The New York Times as the "American National Theater ", but the organization uses "re" in the spelling of its name. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. has the more common American spelling theater in its references to the Eisenhower Theater, part of the Kennedy Center. Some cinemas outside New York also use
10005-413: The American usage along with numerous other words such as eon or fetus , while other words such as oestrogen or paediatrician are spelled the British way. The Macquarie Dictionary also notes a growing tendency towards replacing ae and oe with e worldwide and with the exception of manoeuvre, all British or American spellings are acceptable variants. Elsewhere, the British usage prevails, but
10150-587: The Anglo-French spelling for defense and offense , which are defence and offence in British English. Likewise, there are the American pretense and British pretence ; but derivatives such as defensive , offensive , and pretension are always thus spelled in both systems. Australian and Canadian usages generally follow British usage. The spelling connexion is now rare in everyday British usage, its use lessening as knowledge of Latin attenuates, and it has almost never been used in
10295-668: The British usage of -our . This coincided with a renewed interest in Canadian English, and the release of the updated Gage Canadian Dictionary in 1997 and the first Canadian Oxford Dictionary in 1998. Historically, most libraries and educational institutions in Canada have supported the use of the Oxford English Dictionary rather than the American Webster's Dictionary . Today, the use of
10440-471: The Commonwealth. The -er spellings are recognized as minor variants in Canada, partly due to United States influence. They are sometimes used in proper names (such as Toronto's controversially named Centerpoint Mall ). For advice / advise and device / devise , American English and British English both keep the noun–verb distinction both graphically and phonetically (where the pronunciation
10585-607: The English Language ("ADEL", "Webster's Dictionary", 1828). Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. In A Companion to the American Revolution (2008), John Algeo notes: "it is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in the United States, but he did not originate them. Rather [...] he chose already existing options such as center, color and check for
10730-476: The English Language , and an "American standard" started following the work of Noah Webster and, in particular, his An American Dictionary of the English Language , first published in 1828. Webster's efforts at spelling reform were effective in his native country, resulting in certain well-known patterns of spelling differences between the American and British varieties of English. However, English-language spelling reform has rarely been adopted otherwise. As
10875-488: The Greek-style ligature as, for example, in maelstrom or toe ; the same is true for the British form aeroplane (compare other aero- words such as aerosol ) . The now chiefly North American airplane is not a respelling but a recoining, modelled after airship and aircraft . The word airplane dates from 1907, at which time the prefix aero- was trisyllabic, often written aëro- . In Canada, e
11020-569: The North Adriatic region are sometimes classified as Italic. Albanian and Greek are the only surviving Indo-European descendants of a Paleo-Balkan language area, named for their occurrence in or in the vicinity of the Balkan peninsula . Most of the other languages of this area—including Illyrian , Thracian , and Dacian —do not appear to be members of any other subfamilies of PIE, but are so poorly attested that proper classification of them
11165-638: The Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia with agriculture beginning c. 7500–6000 BCE, the Armenian hypothesis , the Paleolithic continuity paradigm , and the indigenous Aryans theory. The last two of these theories are not regarded as credible within academia. Out of all the theories for
11310-526: The Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian languages due to early language contact , as well as some morphological similarities—notably the Indo-European ablaut , which is remarkably similar to the root ablaut system reconstructible for Proto-Kartvelian. The Lusitanian language was a marginally attested language spoken in areas near the border between present-day Portugal and Spain . The Venetic and Liburnian languages known from
11455-518: The US: the more common connection has become the standard worldwide. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the older spelling is more etymologically conservative, since the original Latin word had -xio- . The American usage comes from Webster , who abandoned -xion and preferred -ction . Connexion was still the house style of The Times of London until the 1980s and was still used by Post Office Telecommunications for its telephone services in
11600-575: The United Kingdom had little effect on today's American spellings and vice versa. For the most part, the spelling systems of most Commonwealth countries and Ireland closely resemble the British system. In Canada, the spelling system can be said to follow both British and American forms, and Canadians are somewhat more tolerant of foreign spellings when compared with other English-speaking nationalities. Australian English mostly follows British spelling norms but has strayed slightly, with some American spellings incorporated as standard. New Zealand English
11745-497: The United States took these preferences with them. In the early 20th century, H. L. Mencken notes that " honor appears in the 1776 Declaration of Independence , but it seems to have been put there rather by accident than by design". In Jefferson 's original draft it is spelled "honour". In Britain, examples of behavior , color , flavor , harbor , and neighbor rarely appear in Old Bailey court records from
11890-423: The United States use Centre in their names. Examples include the villages of Newton Centre and Rockville Centre , the city of Centreville , Centre County and Centre College . Sometimes, these places were named before spelling changes but more often the spelling serves as an affectation. Proper names are usually spelled according to their native-variety spelling vocabulary; so, for instance, although Peter
12035-617: The adjective glamorous often drops the first "u". Saviour is a somewhat common variant of savior in the US. The British spelling is very common for honour (and favour ) in the formal language of wedding invitations in the US. The name of the Space Shuttle Endeavour has a u in it because the spacecraft was named after British Captain James Cook 's ship, HMS Endeavour . The (former) special car on Amtrak 's Coast Starlight train
12180-451: The body in its working position under normal conditions resets the plough after the obstruction is passed. Another type of auto-reset mechanism uses an oil (hydraulic) and gas accumulator. Shock loads cause the oil to compress the gas. When the gas expands again, the leg returns to its working ploughing position after passing over the obstacle. The simplest mechanism is a breaking (shear) bolt that needs replacement. Shear bolts that break when
12325-511: The bottom of the shaft with bits of rope, which made them more fragile than the Chinese ones, and iron mould-boards did not appear in Europe until the 10th century. The first indisputable appearance after the Roman period is in a northern Italian document of 643. Old words connected with the heavy plough and its use appear in Slavic , suggesting possible early use in that region. General adoption of
12470-518: The building itself, as noted above, generally is spelled theater . For example, the University of Wisconsin–Madison has a "Department of Theatre and Drama", which offers courses that lead to the "Bachelor of Arts in Theatre ", and whose professed aim is "to prepare our graduate students for successful 21st Century careers in the theatre both as practitioners and scholars". Some placenames in
12615-456: The choice to spell such words in the -ise form was a matter of personal preference ; however, a pupil having made the decision, one way or the other, thereafter ought to write uniformly not only for a given word, but to apply that same uniformity consistently for all words where the option is found. Just as with -yze spellings, however, in Canada the ize form remains the preferred or more common spelling, though both can still be found, yet
12760-426: The close historic, economic, and cultural relationship with the United States, -or endings are also sometimes used. Throughout the late 19th and early to mid-20th century, most Canadian newspapers chose to use the American usage of -or endings, originally to save time and money in the era of manual movable type . However, in the 1990s, the majority of Canadian newspapers officially updated their spelling policies to
12905-602: The common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833, he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend , Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, and German . In 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what became known as Grimm's law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik . Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages and demonstrated that sound change systematically transforms all words of
13050-459: The construction to a small amount of wood (although metal edges were possible). These ploughs were fairly fragile and unsuitable for the heavier soils of northern Europe. The introduction of wheels to replace the runner allowed the weight of the plough to increase, and in turn the use of a larger mould-board faced in metal. These heavy ploughs led to greater food production and eventually a marked population increase, beginning around AD 1000. Before
13195-549: The content of the upper 12 to 25 centimetres (5 to 10 in) layer of soil, where most plant feeder roots grow. Ploughs were initially powered by humans, but the use of farm animals is considerably more efficient. The earliest animals worked were oxen. Later, horses and mules were used in many areas. With the Industrial Revolution came the possibility of steam engines to pull ploughs. These in turn were superseded by internal-combustion -powered tractors in
13340-441: The coulter. By the time of the early 1900s, the steel plough had many uses, shapes and names. The "two horse breaking plough" had a point and wing used to break the soil's surface and turn the dirt out and over. The "shovel plough" was used to lay off the rows. The "harrow plough" was used to cover the planted seed. The "scratcher" or "geewhiz" was used to deweed or cultivate the crop. The "bulltongue" and "sweeps" were used to plough
13485-413: The cut formed by the coulter, turning over the soil to the side. The ploughshare spread the cut horizontally below the surface, so that when the mould board lifted it, a wider area of soil was turned over. Mould boards are known in Britain from the late 6th century onwards. There are multiple types of ploughs available. When a plough hits a rock or other solid obstruction, serious damage may result unless
13630-464: The design. Using mathematical methods, he eventually arrived at a shape cast from a single piece of iron, an improvement on the Scots plough of James Anderson of Hermiston . A single-piece cast-iron plough was also developed and patented by Charles Newbold in the United States. This was again improved on by Jethro Wood , a blacksmith of Scipio, New York , who made a three-part Scots plough that allowed
13775-403: The dramatic arts and buildings where stage performances and screenings of films take place (i.e., " movie theaters "); for example, a national newspaper such as The New York Times would use theater in its entertainment section. However, the spelling theatre appears in the names of many New York City theatres on Broadway (cf. Broadway theatre) and elsewhere in the United States. In 2003,
13920-430: The early 20th century. The Petty Plough was a notable invention for ploughing out orchard strips in Australia in the 1930s. Use of the traditional plough has decreased in some areas threatened by soil damage and erosion . Used instead is shallower ploughing or other less-invasive conservation tillage . The plough appears in one of the oldest surviving pieces of written literature, from the 3rd millennium BC, where it
14065-582: The effects of hypothetical sounds which no longer exist in all languages documented prior to the excavation of cuneiform tablets in Anatolian. This theory was first proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 on the basis of internal reconstruction only, and progressively won general acceptance after Jerzy Kuryłowicz 's discovery of consonantal reflexes of these reconstructed sounds in Hittite. Julius Pokorny 's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Indo-European Etymological Dictionary', 1959) gave
14210-715: The ending became ‑our to match the later Old French spelling. The ‑our ending was used not only in new English borrowings, but was also applied to the earlier borrowings that had used ‑or . However, ‑or was still sometimes found. The first three folios of Shakespeare 's plays used both spellings before they were standardised to ‑our in the Fourth Folio of 1685. After the Renaissance , new borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original ‑or ending, and many words once ending in ‑our (for example, chancellour and governour ) reverted to ‑or . A few words of
14355-406: The etymology was not clear, and therefore some scholars advocated ‑or only and others ‑our only. Webster's 1828 dictionary had only -or and is given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the United States. By contrast, Johnson's 1755 (pre-U.S. independence and establishment) dictionary used -our for all words still so spelled in Britain (like colour ), but also for words where
14500-473: The fields were often cross-ploughed lengthwise and breadth-wise, which tended to form squarish Celtic fields . The ard is best suited to loamy or sandy soils that are naturally fertilised by annual flooding, as in the Nile Delta and Fertile Crescent , and to a lesser extent any other cereal -growing region with light or thin soil. To grow crops regularly in less-fertile areas, it was once believed that
14645-565: The first plough widely built in factories and commercially successful there. In 1789 Robert Ransome , an iron founder in Ipswich , started casting ploughshares in a disused malting at St Margaret's Ditches. A broken mould in his foundry caused molten metal to come into contact with cold metal, making the metal surface extremely hard. This process, chilled casting, resulted in what Ransome advertised as "self-sharpening" ploughs. He received patents for his discovery. James Small further advanced
14790-412: The frame carry (from the front) the coupling for the motive power (horses), the coulter, and the landside frame. Depending on the size of the implement, and the number of furrows it is designed to plough at one time, a fore-carriage with a wheel or wheels (known as a furrow wheel and support wheel) may be added to support the frame (wheeled plough). In the case of a single-furrow plough there is one wheel at
14935-614: The frame supporting the under-share (below-ground component). The heavy iron moldboard plow was invented in China 's Han Empire in the 1st and 2nd century, and from there it spread to the Netherlands , which led the Agricultural Revolution. The mould-board plough introduced in the 18th century was a major advance in technology. Chinese ploughs from Han times on fulfill all these conditions of efficiency nicely, which
15080-418: The front and handles at the rear for the ploughman to maneuver it. When dragged through a field, the coulter cuts down into the soil and the share cuts horizontally from the previous furrow to the vertical cut. This releases a rectangular strip of sod to be lifted by the share and carried by the mould board up and over, so that the strip of sod (slice of the topsoil ) that is being cut lifts and rolls over as
15225-411: The great advantage of leaving a level surface that facilitates seedbed preparation and harvesting. Very little marking out is necessary before ploughing can start; idle running on the headland is minimal compared with conventional ploughs. Differences between American and British spellings A "British standard" began to emerge following the 1755 publication of Samuel Johnson 's A Dictionary of
15370-582: The harrow were developed subsequently. By the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, Chinese ploughs had reached a state of development that would not be seen in Holland until the 17th century. The Romans achieved a heavy-wheeled mould-board plough in the late 3rd and 4th century AD, for which archaeological evidence appears, for instance, in Roman Britain . The Greek and Roman mould-boards were usually tied to
15515-685: The influence of the American labor movement and King O'Malley . On top of that, some place names in South Australia such as Victor Harbor , Franklin Harbor or Outer Harbor are usually spelled with the -or spellings. Aside from that, -our is now almost universal in Australia but the -or endings remain a minority variant. New Zealand English , while sharing some words and syntax with Australian English , follows British usage. In British English, some words from French, Latin or Greek end with
15660-470: The long sides and being dragged across the short sides without ploughing. The length of the strip was limited by the distance oxen (later horses) could comfortably work without rest, and their width by the distance the plough could conveniently be dragged. These distances determined the traditional size of the strips: a furlong , (or "furrow's length", 220 yards (200 m)) by a chain (22 yards (20 m)) – an area of one acre (about 0.4 hectares); this
15805-654: The main Indo-European language families, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Indo-European. Slavic: Russian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Polish , Czech , Slovak , Sorbian , Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian , Slovenian , Macedonian , Kashubian , Rusyn Iranic: Persian , Pashto , Balochi , Kurdish , Zaza , Ossetian , Luri , Talyshi , Tati , Gilaki , Mazandarani , Semnani , Yaghnobi ; Nuristani Commonly proposed subgroups of Indo-European languages include Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Aryan , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Phrygian , Daco-Thracian , and Thraco-Illyrian . There are numerous lexical similarities between
15950-438: The middle of the rows. All these metal plough points required being re-sharpened about every ten days, due to their use on rough and rocky ground. The first mould-board ploughs could only turn the soil over in one direction ( conventionally to the right), as dictated by the shape of the mould board; therefore, a field had to be ploughed in long strips, or lands . The plough was usually worked clockwise around each land, ploughing
16095-534: The most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse , which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout
16240-574: The mould board. Abrasion eventually wears out all parts of a plough that come into contact with the soil. When agriculture was first developed , soil was turned using simple hand-held digging sticks and hoes . These were used in highly fertile areas, such as the banks of the Nile , where the annual flood rejuvenates the soil, to create drills (furrows) in which to plant seeds. Digging sticks, hoes and mattocks were not invented in any one place, and hoe cultivation must have been common everywhere agriculture
16385-414: The nature of the suffix used. The u is kept before English suffixes that are freely attachable to English words (for example in humourless , neighbourhood , and savoury ) and suffixes of Greek or Latin origin that have been adopted into English (for example in behaviourism , favourite , and honourable ). However, before Latin suffixes that are not freely attachable to English words,
16530-402: The original plough body classification. The various types have been traditionally classified as general purpose, digger, and semi-digger, as described below. The land side is the flat plate which presses against and transmits the lateral thrust of the plough bottom to the furrow wall. It helps to resist the side pressure exerted by the furrow slice on the mould board. It also helps to stabilise
16675-409: The other components of the bottom are attached. It is an irregular piece of metal, which may be made of cast iron for cast iron ploughs or welded steel for steel ploughs. The frog is the foundation of the plough bottom. It takes the shock resulting from hitting rocks, and therefore should be tough and strong. The frog is in turn fastened to the plough frame. A runner extending from behind the share to
16820-535: The other is borne upside-down in the air. At the end of each row the paired ploughs are turned over so that the other can be used along the next furrow, again working the field in a consistent direction. These ploughs date back to the days of the steam engine and the horse. In almost universal use on farms, they have right and left-handed mould boards, enabling them to work up and down the same furrow. Reversible ploughs may either be mounted or semi-mounted and are heavier and more expensive than right-handed models, but have
16965-403: The other side of the plough to turn to the left. (The coulter and ploughshare are fixed.) Thus adjacent furrows can be ploughed in opposite directions, allowing ploughing to proceed continuously along the field and so avoid the ridge–furrow topography. The reversible (or roll-over) plough has two mould-board ploughs mounted back to back, one turning right, the other left. While one works the land,
17110-453: The plough is equipped with some safety device. The damage may be bent or broken shares, bent standards, beams or braces. The three basic types of safety devices used on mould-board ploughs are a spring release device in the plough drawbar, a trip beam construction on each bottom, and an automatic reset design on each bottom. The spring release was used in the past almost universally on trailing-type ploughs with one to three or four bottoms. It
17255-409: The plough moves forward, dropping back upside down into the furrow and onto the turned soil from the previous run down the field. Each gap in the ground where the soil has been lifted and moved across (usually to the right) is called a furrow. The sod lifted from it rests at an angle of about 45 degrees in the adjacent furrow, up the back of the sod from the previous run. A series of ploughings run down
17400-487: The plough to create the desired width of furrow. The share is a plane part with a trapezoidal shape. It cuts the soil horizontally and lifts it. Common types are regular, winged-plane, bar-point, and share with mounted or welded point. The regular share conserves a good cut but is recommended on stone-free soils. The winged-plane share is used on heavy soil with a moderate amount of stones. The bar-point share can be used in extreme conditions (hard and stony soils). The share with
17545-427: The plough while in operation. The rear bottom end of the landslide, which rubs against the furrow sole, is known as the heel. A heel iron is bolted to the end of the rear of the land side and helps to support the back of the plough. The land side and share are arranged to give a "lead" towards the unploughed land, so helping to sustain the correct furrow width. The land side is usually made of solid medium-carbon steel and
17690-426: The proto-Indo-European language. By the early 1900s, Indo-Europeanists had developed well-defined descriptions of PIE which scholars still accept today. Later, the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages added to the corpus of descendant languages. A subtle new principle won wide acceptance: the laryngeal theory , which explained irregularities in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology as
17835-406: The rear of the plough controls the direction of the plough, because it is held against the bottom land-side corner of the new furrow being formed. The holding force is the weight of the sod, as it is raised and rotated, on the curved surface of the mould board. Because of this runner, the mould board plough is harder to turn around than the scratch plough, and its introduction brought about a change in
17980-428: The regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws ), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. PIE
18125-730: The set of correspondences in his prize essay Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse ('Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language'), where he argued that Old Norse was related to the Germanic languages, and had even suggested a relation to the Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Latin and Romance languages. In 1816, Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit , in which he investigated
18270-614: The shape of fields – from mostly square fields into longer rectangular "strips" (hence the introduction of the furlong ). An advance on the basic design was the iron ploughshare, a replaceable horizontal cutting surface mounted on the tip of the share. The earliest ploughs with a detachable and replaceable share date from around 1000 BC in the Ancient Near East , and the earliest iron ploughshares from about 500 BC in China. Early mould boards were wedges that sat inside
18415-441: The share into the ground to a regular depth. The clearance, usually referred to as suction or down suction, varies with different makes and types of plough. Share configuration is related to soil type, particularly in the down suction or concavity of its lower surface. Generally three degrees of clearance or down suction are recognised: regular for light soil, deep for ordinary dry soil, and double-deep for clay and gravelly soils. As
18560-457: The share wears away, it becomes blunt and the plough will require more power to pull it through the soil. A plough body with a worn share will not have enough "suck" to ensure it delves the ground to its full working depth. In addition, the share has horizontal suction related to the amount its point is bent out of line with the land side. Down suction causes the plough to penetrate to proper depth when pulled forward, while horizontal suction causes
18705-608: The simplicity, analogy or etymology". William Shakespeare 's first folios , for example, used spellings such as center and color as much as centre and colour . Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted. In Britain, the influence of those who preferred the Norman (or Anglo-French ) spellings of words proved to be decisive. Later spelling adjustments in
18850-475: The simplified form palestra is described by Merriam-Webster as "chiefly Brit[ish]." This is a reverse of the typical rule, where British spelling uses the ae / oe and American spelling simply uses e . Words that can be spelled either way in British English include cham a eleon , encyclop a edia , hom o eopathy , medi a eval (a minor variant in both AmE and BrE ), f o etid and f o etus . The spellings f o etus and f o etal are Britishisms based on
18995-410: The soil must be turned to bring nutrients to the surface. A major advance for this type of farming was the turn plough, also known as the mould-board plough (UK), moldboard plow (U.S.), or frame-plough. A coulter (or skeith) could be added to cut vertically into the ground just ahead of the share (in front of the frog), a wedge-shaped cutting edge at the bottom front of the mould board with the landside of
19140-410: The sounds became monophthongs , and later applied to words not of Greek origin, in both Latin (for example, cœli ) and French (for example, œuvre ). In English, which has adopted words from all three languages, it is now usual to replace Æ/æ with Ae/ae and Œ/œ with Oe/oe . In many words, the digraph has been reduced to a lone e in all varieties of English: for example, o economics , pr
19285-695: The spelling "is often seen as such". The -ize form is known as Oxford spelling and is used in publications of the Oxford University Press, most notably the Oxford English Dictionary , and of other academic publishers such as Nature , the Biochemical Journal and The Times Literary Supplement . It can be identified using the IETF language tag en-GB-oxendict (or, historically, by en-GB-oed ). In Ireland, India, Australia, and New Zealand -ise spellings strongly prevail:
19430-608: The spellings with just e are increasingly used. Manoeuvre is the only spelling in Australia, and the most common one in Canada, where maneuver and manoeuver are also sometimes found. The -ize spelling is often incorrectly seen in Britain as an Americanism. It has been in use since the 15th century, predating the -ise spelling by over a century. The verb-forming suffix -ize comes directly from Ancient Greek -ίζειν ( -ízein ) or Late Latin -izāre , while -ise comes via French -iser . The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) recommends -ize and lists
19575-409: The stilt (handle) and the other a share (cutting blade) dragged through the topsoil to cut a shallow furrow suitable for most cereal crops. The ard does not clear new land well, so hoes or mattocks had to be used to pull up grass and undergrowth, and a hand-held, coulter -like ristle could be made to cut deeper furrows ahead of the share. Because the ard left a strip of undisturbed earth between furrows,
19720-422: The time needed to prepare a field and so allowed a farmer to work a larger area of land. In addition, the resulting pattern of low (under the mould board) and high (beside it) ridges in the soil forms water channels, allowing the soil to drain. In areas where snow build-up causes difficulties, this lets farmers plant the soil earlier, as the meltwater run-off drains away more quickly. There are five major parts of
19865-412: The vowel is unreduced in pronunciation (e.g., devour , contour , flour , hour , paramour , tour , troubadour , and velour ), the spelling is uniform everywhere. Most words of this kind came from Latin, where the ending was spelled ‑or . They were first adopted into English from early Old French , and the ending was spelled ‑our , ‑or or ‑ur . After the Norman conquest of England ,
20010-585: The wheeled heavy plough, common in Roman north-western Europe by the 5th century AD. Many view plough as a derivative of the verb * plehan ~ * plegan 'to take responsibility' (cf. German pflegen 'to look after, nurse'), which would explain, for example, Old High German pfluog with its double meaning of 'plough' and 'livelihood'. Guus Kroonen (2013) proposes a vṛddhi -derivative of * plag/kkōn 'sod' (cf. Dutch plag 'sod', Old Norse plagg 'cloth', Middle High German pflacke 'rag, patch, stain'). Finally, Vladimir Orel (2003) tentatively attaches plough to
20155-428: The word pallor . As a general noun, rigour / ˈ r ɪ ɡ ər / has a u in the UK; the medical term rigor (sometimes / ˈ r aɪ ɡ ər / ) does not, such as in rigor mortis , which is Latin. Derivations of rigour / rigor such as rigorous , however, are typically spelled without a u , even in the UK. Words with the ending -irior , -erior or similar are spelled thus everywhere. The word armour
20300-399: Was also discovered at Kalibangan , India. A terracotta model of the early ards was found at Banawali , India, giving insight into the form of the tool used. The ard remained easy to replace if it became damaged and easy to replicate. The earliest was the bow ard, which consists of a draft-pole (or beam) pierced by a thinner vertical pointed stick called the head (or body), with one end being
20445-666: Was not until the mid-1990s that Canadian-based dictionaries became increasingly common.) Worldwide, -ize endings prevail in scientific writing and are commonly used by many international organizations, such as United Nations Organizations (such as the World Health Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization ) and the International Organization for Standardization (but not by
20590-428: Was once somewhat common in American usage but has disappeared except in some brand names such as Under Armour . The agent suffix -or ( separator , elevator , translator , animator , etc.) is spelled thus both in American and British English. Commonwealth countries normally follow British usage. Canadian English most commonly uses the -our ending and -our- in derivatives and inflected forms. However, owing to
20735-496: Was practised. Hoe-farming is the traditional tillage method in tropical or sub-tropical regions, which are marked by stony soils, steep slope gradients, predominant root crops, and coarse grains grown at wide intervals. While hoe-agriculture is best suited to these regions, it is used in some fashion everywhere. Some ancient hoes, like the Egyptian mr , were pointed and strong enough to clear rocky soil and make seed drills , which
20880-929: Was published. Following this, -re became the most common usage in Britain. In the United States, following the publication of Webster's Dictionary in the early 19th century, American English became more standardized, exclusively using the -er spelling. In addition, spelling of some words have been changed from -re to -er in both varieties. These include September , October , November , December , amber, blister , cadaver , chamber , chapter , charter , cider , coffer , coriander , cover , cucumber , cylinder , diaper , disaster , enter , fever , filter , gender , leper , letter , lobster , master , member , meter (measuring instrument) , minister , monster , murder , number , offer , order , oyster , powder , proper , render , semester , sequester , sinister , sober , surrender , tender , and tiger . Words using
21025-440: Was used up until the 1960s in poorer land. It suited the moist Irish climate, as the trenches formed by turning in the sods provided drainage. It allowed potatoes to be grown in bogs (peat swamps) and on otherwise unfarmed mountain slopes. In the basic mould-board plough, the depth of cut is adjusted by lifting against the runner in the furrow, which limited the weight of the plough to what a ploughman could easily lift. This limited
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