Interestingly, I read an article just today that came from the AP (it was originally a Missouri report, I believe) with the word "practise" in it. Now, I haven't seen that before in strictly a local report. I wonder if the British and American spellings will ever merge somewhat. It would make sense with Internet communication.This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,
I think Briticism is more widespread. Google sort of bears this out, giving about twice as many, but most of the top hits are on those worthless dictionaries, and I can't think of a way of filtering to get actual uses.
I prefer Britishism because I think the other is malformed: we have Gallicism and Americanism on adjectives, and Hebraism and Hellenism on stems, of which *Britic- is neither.
Its sound is of course informed by criticism and witticism, of which the latter is a pun (by Dryden) on the former.
Restricting the search to UK sites, -sh- is almost twice as common as -c-. The words are of course not much used here. But at least it excludes those wretched dictionaries, so the sampling might be accurate.
Briticism to fit with witticism would be suitable, as we are a nation who understands irony and the 30-minute sitcom. Australians might also like the fit with criticism, becuase we are a load of whinging poms.
I would use Britishism, as the other option just "looks wrong". I was interested to see that Word's spellchecker queries it, however, and suggests Briticism, using either the British or US English version. I see that Dictionary.com describes Britishism as a "[v]ariant of Briticism".
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