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[Amor de Cosmos]

Reading a collection of Dashiel Hammett's short stories at the moment and noticed that, in the 1920s, "clues" was spelled "clews" (which phonetically makes more sense to me) but by the 30s it had acquired its modern spelling. It got me thinking about which words had changed their spelling in my lifetime. I'm sure there are several but the only one that came to mind was "wagon" which would have been incorrect when I was at school because as we all knew, in English, it was properly "waggon." Any others?

[ursus arctos]

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"Connexion" is no longer favoured in British English, is it?

I was always fond of it.

[Toby Gymshorts]

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That was the one that sprung to my mind, but as always the collective was far too speedy.

[WOM]

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I remember reading one of those Corgi books of Victorian Horror Stories where they used "without the house" for "outside the house". We still say 'within', of course, but 'without' has become a one-meaning word.

That's not the same thing, of course, but I couldn't come up with a threadworthy example.

[Snake Plissken]

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"Outwith" seems to be attempting to be a comeback for it, of sorts.

The one I always think of (apart from "connexion", which I was introduced to when reading "The Cruel Sea") is "Hello", which as recently as the 1940s was a sort of "What's this?" phrase rather than a greeting.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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It was also frequently spelled "Hallo" back then.

[Lang Spoon]

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"Outwith" still exists in Scottish Standard English, is beloved of council parking signs, carries more authority than the prosaic "outside".

[Toby Gymshorts]

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WOM wrote: I remember reading one of those Corgi books of Victorian Horror Stories where they used "without the house" for "outside the house". We still say 'within', of course, but 'without' has become a one-meaning word.

That's not the same thing, of course, but I couldn't come up with a threadworthy example.

Neil Finn might beg to differ.

[Various Artist]

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Amor de Cosmos wrote: It was also frequently spelled "Hallo" back then.

That immediately sprang to mind for me, as well. I'd say the third variant, "Hullo", has undergone a decline in recent decades too.

Edit: Here's an interesting debate about which versions are/were used where.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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Some changes are so slight and subtle it's hard to detect when, or why, they changed. Waggon is a good example. I assume one spelling slowly replaced the other over a generation or so, but quite when that was, or who thought it was a good idea, I've no clue (or clew.)

[Gerontophile]

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I may be mistaken, but I always remember biaised being the correct spelling.

[Various Artist]

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Are you sure you're not just remembering some old liaisons?

[Mockswing]

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Show used to be written as "shew", at least in legal cases from the 18th & 19th century, but don't know if they pronounced it as shew or show.

[Gerontophile]

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Various Artist wrote: Are you sure you're not just remembering some old liaisons?

Yes, it's possible.

[Haddock]

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Gerontophile wrote: I may be mistaken, but I always remember biaised being the correct spelling.

Biast seems to be the recent favoured spelling, if below-the-line Guardian comments are anything to go by.

[tee rex]

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There's been a significant change in our lifetimes, not in spelling as such, but "wrong" grammar becoming accepted, and eventually "right": the past participle becoming the past tense.

Listen to the news/sport and hear "He sunk without trace", as in "Honey I Shrunk the Kids". It's very common now. Some "-ank" forms still prevail ("I drank my tea") but "-unk/-ung" etc seems to be gaining ground. I guess it's due to the tiny difference in mouth movement. We're a lazy species.

[anton pulisov]

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Was "curiousity" ever a word or has is always only been "curiosity" and my brain has just been wrong recently?

One major change I've noticed in my time has been abbreviations. I was taught to write N. A. S. A.

Then it became N.A.S.A.

Later NASA became acceptable.

Now the absolutely hideous Nasa is favoured by some newspapers.

[3 Colours Red]

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IUPAC (one for you there, Antoine) says that "sulfur" is now the only official spelling, ergo "sulfide", "sulfate" etc.

[ad hoc]

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As far as I can tell, "biased" is in the process of being respelled (or possibly regrammared) "bias". As in "He was very bias". This seems to be happening to an increasing number of participles used as adjectives.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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IUPAC (one for you there, Antoine) says that "sulfur" is now the only official spelling, ergo "sulfide", "sulfate" etc.

Well, it's not surprising the international body imposes American English spelling, and so that becomes "official" in usage which has to meet international standards. But each country is free to use its own language in all other writing, so we British can write "sulphur" just as much as, say, Germans can write "Schwefel". I'll be tarred and feathered before I ever use the "f" spelling.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Gray/grey appears to be largely, though not wholly, an American vs other English divide:

http://grammarist.com/spelling/gray-grey/

[Ginger Yellow]

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antoine polus wrote: One major change I've noticed in my time has been abbreviations. I was taught to write N. A. S. A.

Then it became N.A.S.A.

Later NASA became acceptable.

Now the absolutely hideous Nasa is favoured by some newspapers.

It's very common in (British anyway) style guides for initialisms to be capitalised (usually without full stops, but it varies) and acronyms (like Nasa) not to be.

[Stumpy Pepys]

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Reginald Christ wrote: That always irritates me far more than it should, for the same reasons as antoine, I'd imagine. To me writing "Nasa" is like writing "Eu" when referring to the European Union.

Except NASA is an acronym and EU isn't.

No one's saying, "it's time to leave the yoo."

[Sits]

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I have four old Thomas Hardy books of my Grandad's from early in the 20th Century. Plenty of waggons, but what's really noticeable is the proliferation of hyphenated words like to-day and so on.

[3 Colours Red]

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Evariste Euler Gauss wrote:

IUPAC (one for you there, Antoine) says that "sulfur" is now the only official spelling, ergo "sulfide", "sulfate" etc.

Well, it's not surprising the international body imposes American English spelling, and so that becomes "official" in usage which has to meet international standards. But each country is free to use its own language in all other writing, so we British can write "sulphur" just as much as, say, Germans can write "Schwefel". I'll be tarred and feathered before I ever use the "f" spelling.

I don't disagree - there's an inexplicable elegance to the "ph" spelling... but:

The IUPAC adopted the spelling sulfur in 1990, as did the Nomenclature Committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1992, restoring the spelling sulfur to Britain. Oxford Dictionaries note that "in chemistry and other technical uses … the -f- spelling is now the standard form for this and related words in British as well as US contexts, and is increasingly used in general contexts as well."