Difference between humorous and humourous

This is part of the difference between series.

While editing something for a client recently, I noticed their use of humourous.

Normally, at this point of the blog post, I would explain the difference between humorous and humourous, but in this case, humourous is a misspelling.

The confusion arises when we note that in Commonwealth countries, we use humour, compared to the use of humor in the United States. But even in these countries, humourous is largely considered incorrect.

For example, here’s what Oxford Dictionaries has to say on the matter:

Note that although humor is the American spelling of humour, humorous is not an American form. This word is spelled the same way in both British and American English, and the spelling humourous is regarded as an error.

That being said, however, humourous hasn’t always been incorrect. Check out the cover of a 1795 book titled Satirical, Humourous & Familiar Pieces:

Or the 1874 book Love-poems and Humourous Ones:

Or how about The Essays, Humourous, Moral and Literary: Of the Late Benjamin Franklin, published in 1811:

We also have:

• The Merry Mountebank; or the Humourous Quack-Doctor (1732)
• Humourous Scotch Stories by James Smith (1863)
• The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin’s Lawsuit by Richard Harris (1883)
• Selections from the Humourous Writings of W. R. Riley (1884)

And those are just the titles. We find the humourous spelling in text copy as well. Here are just a handful of books where humourous appears:

• Ἀκολουθος, or a second faire warning to take heed of the Scotish Discipline by Richard Watson (1651)
• Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians by Edward Francis Wilson (1886)
• No Hero by E.W. Hornung (1901)
• The Magnetic North by Elizabeth Robins (1904)
• The Life of Froude by Herbert Paul (1905)
• The Fighting Chance by Robert W. Chambers (1906)
• The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers (1908)
• The Danger Mark by Robert W. Chambers (1909)
• Corporal Cameron by Ralph Connor (1912)
• Helena Brett’s Career by Desmond Coke (1913)
• And They Thought We Wouldn’t Fight by Floyd Gibbons (1918)
• The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson by Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez (1920)

If we look at the Google Books NGram Viewer, we see that humourous appeared in print in the mid 17th century, peaked about a century later before starting to slide, then peaking again at the turn of the 19th century, sliding for a century before a slight bump about 100 years ago. Since that last bump, it declined before levelling out about 50 years ago.

 Now, all that being said, humorous is still by far the more popular spelling:

Other than a brief period at the end of the 17th century, humorous has outnumbered humourous as the preferred spelling, with an ever increasing gap starting at the beginning of the 19th century. This gap has grown so wide and the usage of humourous has become so rare, that it’s no surprise dictionaries label it as incorrect.

Although humourous has been used for over 300 years, its relative scarcity would present you with quite the uphill battle to convince someone that it’s a correct spelling.

Which words do you confuse? Let me know in the comments below.

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