British English dictionary is incomplete

[Pete Chown]

Some words are missing from the British English dictionary. It looks as though it was created from the American English dictionary by an automated process, and some of the irregular cases have been missed. For example:

- 'Prize' is missing but 'prise' is in. In British English, you prise with a crowbar, but win a prize. ('Prizefighter' and various similar words are in the dictionary, presumably because it doesn't have an -ize ending, technically speaking.)

- 'Burglarise' (or -ize) is not used in British English; the equivalent word is 'burgle'.

- 'Cauterise' - the preferred spelling is 'cauterize'. Even with words like this, s/ize$/ise/ doesn't always work. :-(

- 'Crystallise' - ditto.

- 'Technicolor' (capital T) is a trademark and therefore retains the American spelling 'color'. 'technicolour' (small T) means garishly coloured. Presumably both spellings should be in the dictionary.

These are just a few examples, unfortunately there seem to be quite a lot of similar cases. Some affect quite common words, like 'prize', while others are rather obscure. Tracing them all will be a bit of a bother, unfortunately, but at the moment people using the Ubuntu applications with a spellchecker in the UK are going to get odd results.

By the way I've checked the examples I gave with the Collins Dictionary. I don't trust myself when it comes to spelling. :-)

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

My Compact OED lists "cauterize (also cauterise)" and "crystallize (also crystallise)", as it does for -ize/-ise words in general, with no special note. (-ize, of course, is not exclusively American English, and is also preferred by Oxford dictionaries, but I'd expect an indication if the -ise variant was not used in some particular case.)

I, and my dictionary, agree with your other examples. The missing "prize" is probably the most serious.

[Pete Chown (pc-metathinking)]

Sorry, I wasn't clear what I meant with cauterize and crystallize. I didn't mean that the -ise endings were wrong, just that they are not the most common spellings. Presumably a spelling checker should allow either. At the moment, the Ubuntu dictionary only allows the less common -ise form.

On the -ize endings in general, it's a difficult call. The OED lists -ize endings, but they don't seem to be in very common use these days. I could agree with a dictionary that included the -ise endings only, or one that included both -ise and -ize, I think.

Wiktionary seems to do quite a good job of indicating British spellings. I wonder if there is a way of extracting the information from there, rather than trying to do an automated conversion of an American dictionary into a British one.