Why 'laborious' and not 'labourious' is the only one correct spelling?
Could anyone elucidate the reason why 'laborious' is the right way of spelling and not 'labourious'? After all 'labour' is the correctly spelt word and despite of it 'labourious' is not the right one. Is it any rule that can justify it?
Top answer
iou' which simply seemed unnecessarily vowel-heavy. Goodness knows if this is the 'right answer'...
- iou' which simply seemed unnecessarily vowel-heavy.
- Goodness knows if this is the 'right answer'...
Get the Weekly English Kit 📬
New words, one handy idiom, and a 2-minute quiz — delivered to your inbox to keep your streak alive.
My understanding was always that this is because of the 'ou...iou' which simply seemed unnecessarily vowel-heavy.
Goodness knows if this is the 'right answer'...
0Shortly after the United States won its freedom from England, Noah Webster wrote the first dictionary of American English, distinguishing it from British English “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.”
Webster reformed the spelling in his dictionary, simplifying what he tho
0lukandIsitthere any rule that can justify it?
Probably not, but in general, words that end in 'our' (labour, colour, flavour) in British English change the 'our' to 'or' when certain suffixes are added. It doesn't always work that way, so it's hard to call it a "rule".
CJ
0My theory is that British "labour" sounds like "LAYbur" whereas "laborious" is pronounced "layBOREious" with an "o" sound. American "labor" has a sound like the conjunction "or" (to my ear).
0
Related Questions