I hat these situations but I have always referred to hair as being "grey". But the word "Gray" also exists and is in common use.

Both seem to be considered valid english spellings, which is not a common occurance in diction. Any thoughts

So what do you think? "grey" or "gray"?

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source gray 1 also grey       (grā)  Pronunciation Key 
adj.   gray·er also grey·er, gray·est also grey·est

1. Of or relating to an achromatic color of any lightness between the extremes of black and white.
2. 1. Dull or dark: a gray, rainy afternoon.
3. Lacking in cheer; gloomy: a gray mood.
4. Having gray hair; hoary.
5. Old or venerable.
6. 1. Having gray hair; hoary.
7. Old or venerable.
8. Intermediate in character or position, as with regard to a subjective matter: the gray area between their differing opinions on the film's morality.

n.   1. An achromatic color of any lightness between the extremes of black and white.

1. An object or animal of the color gray.
2. often Gray1. A member of the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
3. The Confederate Army.

v.   grayed also greyed, gray·ing also grey·ing, grays also greys

v.   tr.
To make gray.

v.   intr.

1. To become gray.
2. 1. To become old; age.
3. To include a large or increasing proportion of older people: "Federal food programs can't keep up with the nation's rapidly graying population" (Michael J. McCarthy).

Here in Canada we generally use "gray" (british spelling) but grey is commonly used as well.....  The American influence on the Great White North (Bob & Doug McKenzie eh!!!) is ever prevalent!!!

Gerard

afaik, "gray" is American, and "grey" is British. I have always used 'grey', but my school teachers always marked it as  a misspelling.

A quick google shows that gray is more common nowadays. 

I had the impression that grey was the British spelling ...
maybe I'm just thinking of Earl Grey Tea, though. 

If it matters, gray is more likely to be used in the internals
of programming languages, in color-picker routines and such.

(Edit: Now I'm salivating for some Earl Grey, but don't have
any in the house!  Phooey.  Or phooay, as the case mey be.)

LOL at wheatpenny.  In elementary school I always used "grey" and  "coloured", being a spelling bee champ (although a horrible typist heh) I was horrified to have a teacher mark off points on a paper for my use of  "colour".  So I marched my 8 yr old self up to her desk and explained to her that it was a perfectly valid spelling of the word and handed her my dictionary.

She didn't like me much after that (I was a precocious snot after all) but she never marked my spelling incorrect again.

There is only one valid way to spell it, and that's "Grey", if you spell it any other way it's wrong :P

"Grey" is the spelling used in GB and Ireland (& in Aus & NZ, as far as I know) and "gray" is American English and both are valid.   I'd assume that "grey" would be the Canadian spelling, too.   The idea of using Google to check for the corekt  spelynge duzz amyooze me, tho.

As far as I'm aware, Grey is considered the 'more' correct spelling as far as the British version of English goes, as opposed to the American English. However , these days, I think it's pretty interchangeable. BTW..as an aside, I think you'll find more people would consider their surname to be GREY, rather than Gray ??

So, how about "gage" and "gauge"

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source gauge also gage       (gāj)  Pronunciation Key 
n.  

1. 1. A standard or scale of measurement.
2. A standard dimension, quantity, or capacity.
3. The distance between the two rails of a railroad.
4. The distance between two wheels on an axle.
5. An instrument for measuring or testing.
6. A means of estimating or evaluating; a test: a gauge of character. See Synonyms at standard.
7. Nautical The position of a vessel in relation to another vessel and the wind.
8. 1. The distance between the two rails of a railroad.
9. The distance between two wheels on an axle.
10. The interior diameter of a shotgun barrel as determined by the number of lead balls of a size exactly fitting the barrel that are required to make one pound. Often used in combination: a 12-gauge shotgun.
11. The amount of plaster of Paris combined with common plaster to speed setting of the mixture.
12. Thickness or diameter, as of sheet metal or wire.
13. The fineness of knitted cloth as determined by the number of loops per 1 1/2 inches.

tr.v.   gauged also gaged, gaug·ing also gag·ing, gaug·es also gag·es

1. To measure precisely.
2. To determine the capacity, volume, or contents of.
3. To evaluate or judge: gauge a person's ability.
4. To adapt to a specified measurement.
5. To mix (plaster) in specific proportions.
6. To chip or rub (bricks or stones) to size.

A gage is a berry fruit and only a gauge is an instrument of measurement :P

I am American and have always used "grey".  I also have an African Grey parrot and the spelling is correct in that instance also. I have seen "gray", but it just looks wrong to me. :-)

am curious as to how Acadia knows it is "grey" , you must of been a English grammar teacher i'd guess.

Grey is English
Gray is Americanised English

the only other one i know is:

Colour is English
Color is Americanised English

it's not that strange really as if you drive just 50-100 miles, sometimes less, from where you are anywhere in England, you will encounter a different English accent, and different pronounciation of words, i've always quite liked the different sounds of English accents but as a kid i'd pick them up quickly if i stayed anywhere for a week or two,so if i had been to Rotherham for a week then back in London i'd be saying "are we going down "tut" pub!" which roughly translates as "are we going down the pub"(LOL)

"America and England - Two countries divided by a common language"

Either George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde

There are absolutely loads of tem Vince, armour, humour, favour, pyjamas, and my personal niggle - when referring to a slip of paper that is made out with a momentary value to be paid to the named person or company it is a cheque and not a check.

LOL! yeah that "check" one would be very confusing to read.

It cranksme straight to serial killer mode everytime I come across it :blushing:

Originally, both am,erican and british spellings were common in the US. he American spellings became "official" when they  were the only spellings imcluded in the first few editions of Webster's dictionary.
When I was a kid I got this bugt bp my butt thatb British spelling was "more correct" than American spelling and got into the habit of spelling things that way.
(recently I acquired dusl US/Australian citizenship, so I guess my use of that spelling could be considered "appropriate" now :D)

Ach, spelling was only standardised on either side of the ocean some two hundred odd years ago, when Johnson created the first dictionary of the English language during George III's reign. That's why there are differences in spelling between Americans and English - they deviated at a point before standardisation. The idea of one being more 'correct' than the other is purely subjective (I think I might be a rare Brit who has no problems with reading American spellings!)

As a side note to that, this is also why I have no difficulties accepting txtspk - it's jst anutha way 2 compress th lingo dwn 2 an ez 2 undrstnd lvl, aftr al.

jonthecelt

Arrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh, not text speak.  All my text messages are even punctuated correctly and I can't bear the abominations done to the language for texting - l8r is a particular annoyance.

the only time those textspeak abbreviations bother me is in chatrooms when people uses them in an intellectual discussion or debate. (for some reason it doesn't look right  '2 C' a scientific lecture or a defense of a philosophical position spelled that way)

Just a footnote.  As an Englishman it's not "UK English" and "American English" it is English, and American English.  ;¬)

Most American English seems to be an attempt to simplify spellings and turn them into a more phonetic vairiant.  For instance...theater for theatre, color for colour, and (the point in case) gray for grey.  I could never work out how you changed lift into elevator, flat into apartment, and trousers into pants though. :biggrin:

well the last one is understandable (changing a longer word for a shorter one), but why the hell did we ever dump those nice short words for three-syllable replacements

fawcet for tap coughs

At least in terms of grammar and phrasing, American is actually the
more preservative and British is the one that has changed.  If you
look at newspapers on both sides of the pond from 1720 or so, they
look similar... and they are both closer to modern American than
to modern British.

This is typical of languages in general.  More change happens
in the 'motherland', while separated or isolated communities tend
to hold steady.

Also, when I was studying for my degree in Modern languages, I took a couple of classes on the history of English, and accordign to them, in the 1600s English was pronounced similar to the way it is in America (that's where we got it from. it was pronounced that way when the brits founded the american colonies in the early 1600s and when British pronunciation changed, American pronunciation didn't change with it.

I always thought gray was american and grey was British. I was tought to spell gray in the states but my Canadian spell check wants the color gray to be the colour grey.  I always heard that 17th century British English sounded more like the broague of the New England Yankees or even the Apalachian Mountain People then the speach of modern London. I have noticed that British people are sounding more and more like Australians to my ear... I can now only understand about half the characters on the British TV show Coronation Street when they speak. I have read a number of studies that claim that the North Western Standard used on American television is pushing regional dialects to become more prounouced in the US. I have seen that English speaking Canadians, especially those in the media, are adopting a more pronounced Canadian accent that when I was a kid was mainly a characature or joke. They are also adopting an Anglophile vocabulary and avoiding certain "American words"  which were once commonplaceand substituting Britishwords in their place. An accent I find interesting is the Alophone accent of Montreal, it is used by English speakers of non-British hertitage even if they are born and reared speking English only... it sounds sort of like an Eastern European accent but I know lots of people from Mediteranian and Middle Eastern families who have it. The Canadian accent that is really mysterious to me is the Acadian accent, these are native french speakers who sound like they come from the American  South, I have heard them complain of being identified as Americans by French speakers in Montereal who do not belive they are actually Francophones. As part of the push to make French Canada a truly french society they are adopting standard Buisness French more in line with Europen French and turning away from traditional Quebec French... I heard on the radio about a small island fishing community where the people speak an old dying form of French but when the people spoke it was the standard Quebecoise of thirty or forty years ago that you would have heard from nearly anyone in Montereal. Lately I have noticed that the speach of actresses in American movies from the ninteen eighties is starting to sound as stylized as that of actresses in the nineen forties!

  Well... comes into conversation late... grey Vs. gray....... I tent to differentiate them as grey... mood and gray... colour...... Actually, both are acceptable, technically, in either usage.......  but if you want something really annoying... try watching anything where they are discussing nuclear anything...... if it's an american.... even a news anchor, but especially "our wonderfully edumacated pollyticians" you almost always get "Nucular"... they pronounce it new-cue-ler. ARGH! it's like some kind of disease!.... Lou.

But NUKE-ULER sounds so tough talk'n compared to the mincing "neu-klee-ar". Oh my, only people with lie-burry cards would say it the way you advocate.

fawcet - is that some new UK spelling?
the word is faucet as far as I know

FAWCET is an acronym (I'm not making this up): Flat Aperture Waveguide Sidewall Emitting Twistreflector

The English language in America is hybridized from the cross-germination of all the languages that have been assimilated into America.  Right now the hybridation includes Spanglish, the odd amalgam of Latino Spanish and American English.

It's the nature of language to change or evolve over time.  Otherwise, we'd all be speaking classic Latin!  Some of the classic Latin scholars, before of the Roman Empire complained loudly and longly about the bastardization and corruption of the mother language by the Gauls and Germanics into an unrecognizable form.

Ya know--they might have been right. :lol:

English is not my first  language and I had a terrible time with spelling at school learning it as a forein language . I lived  a lot of years in the US and in the UK,so it was very liberating to find out about the different versions of spellings. Now I just spell things as I like - surely  it will be right in some version or other... (Or is it that I am always wrong in one version or other?)
My daughter(raised in the UK) spent a term in a US university and was always asked to "say something English"  and she would teach them how to say various rude words in a "proper"  English pronounciation...
In addition to spelling there is also the confusion of different words for the same thing,and same words for different things.Like - torch/flashlight; bonnet/hood;pavement/sidewalk; elevetor/lift; flat/appartment etc. The funniest is trousers/pants - americans use pants for an outer garment,but in england that's the word for underware!

:tongue2: Bill

Not my fault I can;t spell words we don;t even have here sniffles  Could have been worse, I could have spelt it forceit :tongue2:

Fwcatt is the name of a publishing  company. and also the city that Captain Marvel lives in. (the DC captain marvel, not the Marvel one)

**Aah, the English language!
'Grey' is the true English way of spelling it, although we understand that North Americans can spell it differently as with other words like color, neighbor, center etc. In todays age  true English has just been broken up because of accents, dialects etc. Texting has just broken this down even further, I too try to write properly even in a text message.

**"I can now only understand about half the characters on the British TV show Coronation Street when they speak"
**I come from Manchester where Coronation Street is filmed, even I can't understand half the things they say! Only joking, but just to go a few miles in either direction from here & the dialects change so much, it could be a different language, LOL!

**"The English language in America is hybridized from the cross-germination of all the languages that have been assimilated into America.  Right now the hybridation includes Spanglish, the odd amalgam of Latino Spanish and American English."
English itself comes from many different languages, Germanic having a big influence on old English.

  Not my fault I can;t spell words we don;t even have here sniffles  Could have been worse, I could have spelt it forceit

  That's what YOU think....... yer just talkin' "Ebonic street" ( ACTUALLY RECOGNISED by most of the U.S. school systems as legitimate!) Lou.

English is originally a Germanic language, descended from the Low German group, which also includes Dutch and Afrikaans. During the late medieval and early modern era there was heavy influence from Old French. Most of the words of Latin and Greek origin enterd English thru Old French around that time.
English departed more from its Germanic roots than any of the other Germanic languages

It's best to start talking in your local dialect and then you can confuse everyone.  I swear proper Lancastrian is closely related to Celtic as my father-in-law is a proper Glaswegian docker with accent and slang and all and I understand him perfectly because my Great Grandmother was my chief babysitter before I reached school age and I am on of the few peple under the age of 70 who actually understands some of the worst excesses of the language.  Even my hubby says I'm easier to understand when I speak in Lanky cos it is like his boyhood Glaswegian (proper tenement building he coems from too).

Uh Oh I tink may have to start avoiding Stormchaser from now on...........not a red are you gulps

"Uh Oh I tink may have to start avoiding Stormchaser from now on...........not a red are you gulps"
Valerian70 - This doesn't mean you're a blue does it?!!! Yes, I'm a United fan. I actually live in the south of Manchester, in Cheshire, so I like to think of myself of being on the posh side of Manchester! Talking of Glaswegian, that sure is an amazingly strong accent. A friend at work is from Glasgow so I too now understand some of their sayings. He tells me that he waters it down for us here, apparently when he goes back to Glasgow & sees his mates he says I wouldn't understand a word of it!

I only really know Dockers Glaswegian and my father-in-law has it real strong when he's had a pint or two - they've back "up the road" now so undoubtedly he's back to sinking pints of heavy........lol.

Worse than being a blue I support the "other" reds - and I don;t mean Arsenal shudders  You know, the ones that face Chelsea in the next round of the Champions League  - I have a MAJOR sense of Deja Vu about it all.................lol

EDIT: Oh and Cheshir eis posh compared to Manc, I did a Biology degree at Manchester Uni and had the misfortune of living in Wythenshawe for a while - only just in Wythenshawe too, was a darn sight nearer Rusholme.

Valerian70 - Oh, so you're a Liverpool fan!!! I'll tell you something, I really want to play you in the Champions League final. Two of the most historic teams in football playing each other for the ultimate prize, this would be one of the biggest games in English history, oh I can see it now. The bragging rights for the winner here would last a long time!!
Wythenshawe, it's not far from me. I like your term 'misfortune'. I think we'll leave it at that, LOL!

I'm originally from mid-western Canada, but back in 2001 I moved to California and lived and worked there for three years.  part of my job involved updating and editting a website on a daily basis.

My employer was a former school teacher from New York.

Can you imagine how often he lost his mind at my "Canadian" spellings?

Let's not even mention the huge learning curve when I had to go from Metric to Imperial.  I still can't wrap my head around fahrenheit!!

The funny part, though is the accent.  For the most part no one had trouble with the way I spoke.  Most people thought I was a native Californian.  There were a few words that I pronounced differently.  "Pasta" stands out in my mind and I always grew up saying "pop", but down there it's "soda".

Oh, and when I'm under the heavy influence of intoxicants, apparently I say "eh" a lot. LOL.

Grrrrrrr.....................the ebots have got lost in Cyberspace :o|

Of course I'm a Liverpool fan - why would anyone support anyone else ;o)  I sometimes wonder why I am still supporting them but I guess I'm hooked - don;t set me off on Rafa else we'll be here well into 2009.  Not only would it make for a fantastic game but it would really shake UEFA up two teams from the same country through - egads.  Although as there are 3 out of the final 4 from here then I think it speaks volumes.

I can't understand mtric for the life of me and they taught strictly in metric at school and a few years back we officially "dumped" imperial for most things - a pint is still a pint (thank goodness!).  My brain is hardcoded for imperial though so I don;t think I'll ever get the hang ofthis newfangled metric thing.

**I still generally prefer to use imperial. I did learn both at school but imperial just stuck with me more.

Regarding words & phrases in different countries, the ones that get me are the ones that have different meanings. Take 'fanny' for instance. A friend of mine had her friends come over from the States one time & one of them said to her "Sit your fanny down". It brought a few chuckles I can tell you, LOL!

Valerian70 - Question for you, please answer honestly. Who would you rather win the league title, the magical play of United or the grinders of Chelsea?**

Grey is a colour to me and Grays is where i live, tis that simple to me....lol (yep i really live in Grays, its in the UK)

While we're thread-drifting a tad...I'm Liverpool supporter too, and have been for the last 40+ years.
My Dad supports Arsenal, and still reckons "his" Frenchmen speak better English than our Scousers.

Liverpool to do the double over AC Milan.

I don't have any ancestral connections with Liverpool, but I was brought up on the outskirts.   I realised only recently where the Liverpool accent came from.   It always seemed weird that people connected the Liverpudlian accent to Lancastrian and Irish, neither of which sounds very much like Liverpudlian (although it made perfect sense to assume that Irish and local English accents would have had a major influence).   I actually believe that Liverpool's accent is from North Wales.   Liverpool is really the biggest Welsh city, except that it happens to be in England.   The accent of the North Wales coast is monumentally strange and Scouse is a slightly less extreme version of the North Welsh accent.

Every now and again, some genius suggests that people should be permitted to spell English (and any other language, presumably, by implication) however they want.   Unless you have some basic spelling rules, however, one person's prose is another's gobbledygook.   If you are going to have rules, you may as well have set spellings, even if some of the established spellings vary very slightly by territory.  If English spelling were to vary according to local accent, the result would be Bedlam.

Accents are very strange, anyway.   It's certainly true that GB and Ireland have a huge range of accents.   I think you'll find the same range in France, Germany, or Italy, but not, perhaps, in Canada or Australia, despite the huge distances.   I think I can tell Alabama from New Jersey, just about,  but is there such a thing as a Colorado accent?   A New Zealand accent  can be told from an Australian one by a sensitive ear, but a Kiwi friend of mine, having lived consecutively in NSW and London, can no longer distinguish a fellow-countryman from an Australian.

I didn't get any ebots on this.

Well I have checked many refferences and asked many people and have decided to default to the one source of knowledge that is absolute and beyond reproach...

The Sci-Fi Channel.

"Grey" (n). a small grey colored alien.

Good enough for me. :)

I pride myself on my correct English both spelling and speaking. I still to this day ask with "May I" instead of "Can I". Text speak is horrid. It teaches our children nothing except laziness. (I'm like Valerian and even use punctuation LOL)

As for metric and imperial ... how long do we hold onto the past? Metric is the only way to go  - my generation was never taught imperial. Everything here uses metric with the exception of baby weight ... how weird is that? I still don't know how much my kids weighed at birth in metric LOL

Australia doesn't really have any accent differences. There are some slight inflections I pick up from Western Aussies but they are very slight. The Kiwi's are quite similiar to us, with only a few words showing they are a completely different country (six, broom and fish for example).

My brain just doesn;t work in metric and we use measurements a lot in the AC and Refrigeration indusry and I have to do rapid mental approximatiojns from the metric to the imperial to figure out the piperuns and stuff for the engineers.  The thing that really baffles me is copper pipe is sold in 3m or 6m lengths but with diameters of 5/8" etc.  Talk about designed to confuse!

I permanently correct everyone's spoken grammar, so much so it has become a standing joke at work.  My biggest bugbear is soandso and me in instances where it should be soandso and I, must spend half my life correcting that one.  I am also big on manners and can't stand it when people ignore the basics of please and thank you.

As for the footie I'm with Morgano on this one - Liverpool to do the double over AC Milan, but NOT in the same way we did at Istanbul - I couldn't speak above a croak on the Thursday after that particular match blush

Looks like you are outnumbered by a rousing chorus of You'll Never Walk Alone stormchaser

Valerian, I totally agee with you on manners. There's just no excuse not to use them. My kids must have gotten sick of me saying 'please and thankyou', but it has worked, and I often get complimented on how nice their manners are :) My youngest (he's 11) even opens doors for ladies :D

It's noce to know I'm not the only one who corrects others on me and I. It's annoying coming out of the kids mouths, but WAY more aggravating when adults who know better do it.

**England really is a small place with so many different accents. Take Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham, London, Bristol, Plymouth etc, I'm amazed that just travelling a few miles you can end up in a place where it becomes like another language!
I used to find it funny when Americans would talk cockney when they were doing an English accent on tv, I got the impression that's how people thought everyone in England spoke!

OK, Liverpool fans out there. Did you watch United's demolition of Roma the other night? Do you really think you've now got a chance?!!**