Dr Jefyll wrote:
Oh! -- right: color / colour.
I had a feeling you were being humo
urous.
Even so, it took me a moment...
This color/colour difference always reminds me of a "conflict" in the USA during the 19th century concerning the proper word to be used to refer to the location where one goes to meet a train. One group liked the word "station" and another liked "depot." The first group objected to the second group's preference, saying that "station" was proper English and "depot," being a French word (
dépôt), was not, and how dare anyone inject those nasty French words into the king's English. There was a big writeup about it in the magazine
Locomotive, in which the magazine's editor sided with the "station" group.
In exploring the etymology of "station," it turns out that it is derived from Anglo-French
estation, which morphed into Middle English
stacioun. The first known use of "station" as we now spell it was in the late 17th century and early in British railway history, train stations were called stations, not depots (my guess is some 19th century Britons also objected to French words).
So neither group would have been able to eliminate any French from the name of the place where you go to catch your morning train to get to work.