Word.ws English Dictionary

Oxford spelling

Oxford spelling noun: a British English standard spelling, as defined by the Oxford University Press, this being the usual British spelling but with the letter z used in many instances of the suffixes -ize and -ization.

Noun

Oxford spelling (plural Oxford spellings)

  1. A British English standard spelling, as defined by the Oxford University Press, this being the usual British spelling but with the letter z used in many instances of the suffixes -ize and -ization.
    • He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but he had not been many months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College.*
      [note] Pronounced “Maudlin” The Oxford spelling is Magdalen.1897, Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay, James Greenleaf Croswell, Essays on Milton and Addison, Longmans, Green, page 97
    • But the repudiation at Oxford of the Oxford spelling of thirty years ago removes the last prop from the tumbling hyphen, and now there is no reason why any one who writes about bookplates should not follow established literary usage.1917, Bookplate Quarterly, v 1, n 1, American Bookplate Society, p 31

Examples of Oxford spelling in a sentence

  • . . . my Oxford spelling to Webster spelling.1929, Frances Newman, Hansell Baugh, Frances Newman's Letters, Liveright, page 212:
  • The net effect of such attitudes was to require American publishers to have some of their books typeset in a style of British orthography known as "modified Oxford spelling.”1992, James L. W. West III, The Chace Act and Anglo-American Literary Relations, in Studies in Bibliography: Papers of the Bibliographical...
  • At that time I was a very good typist, knew Oxford spelling, and could do verbatim dictation.”1998, Ben Young, Dixionia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon, Greenwood Publishing Group, pages 12–13:

Forms of Oxford spelling

pluralOxford spellings

Questions about Oxford spelling

What does Oxford spelling mean?
Oxford spelling means a British English standard spelling, as defined by the Oxford University Press, this being the usual British spelling but with the letter z used in many instances of the suffixes -ize and -ization.
How do you use Oxford spelling in a sentence?
. . . my Oxford spelling to Webster spelling.
What part of speech is Oxford spelling?
Oxford spelling is a noun.
What is the plural of Oxford spelling?
The plural of Oxford spelling is Oxford spellings.

Words near Oxford spelling in the dictionary

  1. Oxford scholars
  2. Oxford shirt
  3. Oxford shirts
  4. Oxford shoe
  5. Oxford shoes
  6. Oxford spelling
  7. Oxford spellings
  8. Oxford tie
  9. Oxford ties
  10. Oxfordesque
  11. Oxfordian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Oxford spelling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Oxford spelling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oxford_spelling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.