British English

comparative more British English · superlative most British English

1. Of or relating to, or spoken or written in British English.

1. uncountableThe English language as written and spoken in the United Kingdom; (often) that which is spoken in both the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations, considered as a single variety.

   We shall not say that this is British English; but we willingly confess that it is not American English.

   1861, “The Shakespeare Mystery”, in The Atlantic Monthly, v 8, n 47, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, p 258 (note)

   2 more examples

   Some noticeable and general differences between American and British English may be explained by the fact, that considerable bodies of Englishmen sometimes emigrated from the same vicinity, and that in their new home they and their multiplied descendants have kept together and continued to employ dialect peculiarities of their native speech, or retained words of general usage which elsewhere perished.

   1863, George Perkins Marsh, “The English Language in America”, in Lectures on the English Language, 4th edition, New York: Charles Scribner, page 667

   Now, according to my observation, no man whom the Dean of Canterbury, or the Public Orator of Cambridge, would accept as a speaker of pure English, says, with thick utterance, “a gloss of ayull;” and yet thousands of their countrymen do speak thus, and this peculiarity of British English passes very gradually away as social and mental culture increase, until among the best-bred and best-educated people it vanishes, and is heard no more than it or a nasal twang is heard among similar people here.

   1867, Richard Grant White, “Words and their Uses: British English and American English”, in The Galaxy, volume 4, New York, page 102

   Synonyms: Britglish, Britlish, BE, BrE, BrEn, BR-en, EN-br, Brit