Quote:
Originally Posted by rrskylar
LOL! yeah damn ipad, use the word defense a lot on another forum!  |
Both are correct. Defence is the original spelling and by far the most common spelling in the Commonwealth countries whereas Defense is the common spelling in the United States. It's an example of the simplification of American English that begin with the publication of Webster's dictionary around 1830. Defensive, defensiveness, defensible, etc. were spelled with the s then and still are, so it was thought preferable to spell the root word in the same way. The change in usage was a slow process, it took to the early 20th century before defense became the preferred spelling in the U.S. It's a creeping Americanism here, introduced to Canada in WWII and becoming increasingly used in Canadian publications over the following decades. Still fairly infrequent though.