1 wk. ago • 99%

Simple spelling rule.

In celebration of my new citizenship!

32 comments

I've always thought of it as "grEy" is English and "grAy" is American.

58
- Not wrong. For me, Grey is a colour, Gray is an American surname.
  
  Except for Grey's Anatomy. The Americans had to concede with that one because of the book, but I'm sure Americans thought it was exotic. That's why they called the other show House and not Condo. Marketability.
  
  34
  
  I thought House was because it sounds like “home” and that sounds like Holmes, and the character/show of House is based on the Sherlock Holmes stories.
  
  18
  
  This is how I think of it as well. I spell the color with an e, and Gray is a name in my extended family.
  
  2
- Grey is colour and gray is color
  
  16
I think of grey as having a slight blue tinge, like grey skies

Versus gray is made of only (e.g.) black and white paint.

But I know there's no reason for that distinction and ultimately they're interchangeable.

Mostly I'm just curious how I got this idea of a slightly bluer grey and if anyone else has a similar mental association.

17
- Interesting! There is a linguistic phenomenon that synonyms differentiate their meanings because we tend to assume that different words have different meanings. This happens both on the individual and collective level. Funny that it even works for different spellings in your case! Maybe you encountered the one in a specific context and since than associate it
  
  7
- I prefer spelling it with an ‘e’ so I always do that (probably because my name has two common spellings, one with an A and the other with an E, and mine is the latter).
  
  But if forced to identify which is which color-wise, I’d say “grey” has cool undertones while “gray” has warm undertones. Really no reason to think that, but it’s right in my brain.
  
  4
  
  Reyali, more like Geigh-ly! Huht huht
  
  2
- For me it's always been Grey: cool (blue/black tones) Gray: warm (brown/orange tones)
  
  3
- Felt this way my whole life about low-saturation blues and also gre/ay... discovered I have something going on in my left eye that doesn't really see greens all that well. Found this out over a rollicking argument over my favorite gray coat which obv, was actually kinda greenish
  
  2
CSS has solved this issue years ago

10
- It's okay for them to be wrong.
  
  8
- #666666
  
  3
I like spelling it grey because it looks better

10
And Gary is the name of Spongebob's snail

7
I pronounce the british word as Co-lour-ur

7
- Colauer and armauer.
  
  1
One's an alien, the other is also an alien but spelled differently.

7
I frequently confuse the two when I'm not thinking, or my browser has defaulted to the colonial spellchecker.

6
- colonial
  
  This could apply to either spelling.
  
  6
🧐

4
I always forget how cute their little island english is with all the extra letters and fun ways they mutate loan words!

4
- Loan words? Dude, you're loaning the entire language.
  
  6
  
  Languages are the original open source and will never stop forking right off however enough people form and propagate them, dude
  
  5
- You sound like a candidate for a book I enjoyed: Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language
  
  2
Other way around.

2
https://youtu.be/qtJRJVdUFx4

2

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