"Oestrogen" and "oesophagus" -- why are they spelled differently in British English?


Within Biology, there are some biological terms that differ in spelling between the British English and American English dictionaries. For example, oestrogen and oesophagus, as well as the word oestriol are all spelled differently in British English dictionaries. Is there anything in particular that makes this so?



Answer



The word oestrogen comes from the Latin word oestrus, and oesophagus is a Latin word as well.


The oe spelling in Latin originally represented a diphthong [oj] ("oy"), but then later (in Latin) became a long vowel [ee]. When we borrowed such words into English, it was pronounced more like [i], [e], or [ɛ] (depending on the word), following English pronunciation rules.


And since we pronounce them like "estrogen" and "esophagus", the US English spelling was changed to reflect the English pronunciation more closely, by dropping the o. In British English, the connection to the original Latin spelling was retained.


(Something similar to this happened with, e.g., encyclopaedia (British) / encyclopedia (US).)


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