858: glamour and American English's Dropped U Apr 14, 2017

American and British (and otherwise non-American spellings) are mostly similar with a few exceptions here and there. In general, when there is a difference it is the case that the American spelling is less similar to an Old French origin for words deriving from this language. The simple reason for this is that the United States gained its independence from Great Britain before universal standardized spelling, and lexicographers, especially Webster, had the chance to come up with new rules. Most of the efforts to change spelling was to make it more closely match the way that people spoke, and while Webster's push for 'tongue' to be spelt 'tung' failed, dropping the U in words like, 'color', 'honor', and 'behavior caught on eventually. One word that retains its U in American writings is 'glamour', but here, the word was neither from Old French, nor did it enter English much before American independence. The word was adopted in the early 18th century from Scots Gaelic originally meaning ‘enchantment’ ultimately as alteration of 'grammar'. That word, which is from Greek was never used to mean 'magic' or anything of the like but the Latin word 'grammatica' was used to mean ‘learning’ and this included the popular association with practicing sorcery.