difference between

Question

whats is the difference between enquiry and inquiry

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

What is the difference between enquiry and inquiry?

Did you check a dictionary?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inquiry

inquiry:
Origin:
1400–50; inquire + -y; replacing late Middle English enquery

Teacher Mike · Answer

It's basically the same word except enquiry is usually used in a formal investigation and inquiry is used when asking a general question

AlpheccaStars · Answer

Teacher Mike It's basically the same word except enquiry is usually used in a formal investigation and inquiry is used when asking a general question

The American Corpus shows no such distinction.
Inquiry is used much more frequently (it is in the top 4000 words by frequency). It is used in all genres, including Academic writing.

Enquiry is ranked 26000+ by frequency of usage. It appears most often in Academic sources, and very seldom in other types of sources.

It is not surprising that "enquiry" is much more prevalent in British English (using the BNC) than American English (using the COCA). And, to generalize, I would wager that the older the dialect of English, the higher the ratio of enquiry / inquiry.
Indian English generally uses older forms and vocabulary patterns of the language, so "enquiry" may be even more prevalent than in American or British English.

You can check it out for yourself here:

http://www.wordandphrase.info/frequencyList.asp

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