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The following is a list of common words sometimes ending with "-ise" (en-GB) especially in the UK popular press and "-ize" in American English (en-US) and Oxford spelling (en-GB-oxendict; formerly en-GB-oed) as used by the British Oxford English Dictionary, which uses the "-ize" ending for most of the same words as American English.
In Canada, the -ize ending is more common, although the Ontario Public School Spelling Book [65] spelled most words in the -ize form, but allowed for duality with a page insert as late as the 1970s, noting that, although the -ize spelling was in fact the convention used in the OED, the choice to spell such words in the -ise form was a matter of ...
Oxford spelling. Oxford spelling (also Oxford English Dictionary spelling, Oxford style, or Oxford English spelling) is a spelling standard, named after its use by the Oxford University Press, that prescribes the use of British spelling in combination with the suffix -ize in words like realize and organization instead of -ise endings.
Oxford spelling only differ from British spelling in the spelling of words from Greek -izein, Latin -izāre, so it's hardly appropriate to call it 'essentially American spelling. Colourize certainly demonstrates this well. 2.125.144.222 17:26, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling/Words ending with "-ise" or "-ize". This table gives the accepted spellings (following government guidelines and major dictionaries). It is by no means exhaustive, but rather an overview. When two variants appear in the same cell, the one listed first is more widely used.
Both "ise" and "ize" endings are used in British English, in fact the Oxford English Dictionary follows Fowler's advice in using only the "ize" ending for most of these words (though it includes a cite of "fertilise" from as early as 1760).
Words ending in unstressed -ile derived from Latin adjectives ending -ilis are mostly pronounced with a full vowel in BrE / aɪ l / but a reduced vowel or syllabic L in AmE / əl / (e.g. fertile rhymes with fur tile in BrE but with furtle in AmE). AmE will (unlike BrE, except when indicated with B2) have a reduced last vowel:
Most plurals of words ending in -is are -es (pronounced [iːz]), using the regular Latin plural rather than the Greek -εις: crises, analyses, bases, with only a few didactic words having English plurals in -eis: poleis, necropoleis, and acropoleis (though acropolises is by far the most common English plural).