So I gave my induction lecture today, in which I said to the students that something or other about university-level study can be difficult to acclimate to. Afterwards, my colleague the Syntactician queried my use of the verb acclimate (stress on the first syllable), since she'd say acclimatise in the same situation. And so would most BrE speakers. Either is acceptable in AmE, but to me, acclimati{s/z}e sounds better with physical rather than figurative climates. A quick look at Google suggests that there's something to that intuition. Counting the first 20 (I did say it was quick!) different hits for acclimate-to and acclimatize-to, I found:
(The items counted as 'other' were dictionary definitions or indices.)
Interestingly, most of the acclimatizes were about adjusting to high altitudes, and many of the acclimates were about adjusting to life at an American university. No wonder it leapt into mind today, as I was almost in the word's natural environment. (But haven't acclimated to saying acclimatised.)
Acclimate was originally used in Britain, but, like many other things we've discussed, it faded out of use here while hanging around in the US. The OED records acclimate as slightly older (1792 vs. 1836).
In discussing orientate and pressuri{s/z}e, I wondered whether we could find any verbs that usually contain more syllables in AmE than in BrE. Haven't heard of any yet, but here's another example of BrE being a bit more long-winded in its verbage.
PHYSICAL | FIGURATIVE | OTHER | |
acclimate to | 6 | 12 | 2 |
acclimatize to | 18 | 1 | 1 |
(The items counted as 'other' were dictionary definitions or indices.)
Interestingly, most of the acclimatizes were about adjusting to high altitudes, and many of the acclimates were about adjusting to life at an American university. No wonder it leapt into mind today, as I was almost in the word's natural environment. (But haven't acclimated to saying acclimatised.)
Acclimate was originally used in Britain, but, like many other things we've discussed, it faded out of use here while hanging around in the US. The OED records acclimate as slightly older (1792 vs. 1836).
In discussing orientate and pressuri{s/z}e, I wondered whether we could find any verbs that usually contain more syllables in AmE than in BrE. Haven't heard of any yet, but here's another example of BrE being a bit more long-winded in its verbage.