Colour vs. color

Does anyone happen to know why the word colour gets spelled differently from country to country?
Here in canada is gets spelled colour and I think its americans that spell it color. I don't understand why its different. How about other...

countries, do they spell it different too?

Use the word hue and avoid all the sphincters who are hypocritical!

I was brought up to use the colour, honour, centre, foetus, metre, etc. spellings in England. Canada has taken most of them. But I think the American way is a bit more efficient.

I spell it colour, but I live in America. I don't remember why, but I do know I used to get in trouble for spelling words like that with you back in school. To my knowledge, it's also supposed to be aluminium but Americans dropped it down to aluminum.

Main Entry:
1col·or Listen to the pronunciation of 1color
Pronunciation:
\ˈkə-lər\
Function:
noun
Usage:
often attributive
Etymology:
Middle English colour, from Anglo-French, from Latin color; akin to Latin celare to conceal — more at hell
Date:
13th century

There you go...the spelling changes, as does the word labour/labor...closer to Europe, the less it changes.

Thats a good question. I noticed a lot of words in canada or other places have a you where in america theres just the o.
like colour, labour, humour, etc.
English is just weird.

British vs American spelling: Colour is British and Color is American,

because Canada was under British rule for so long, I guess the British influence stuck around...

this may help...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

And if you change your language setting to british english, it will accept colour as the right way to spell it instead of color...

In America I think we are just lazy and dropped the U out of everything possible : ) im not real sure though sorry...

I hate that on one of my final essays we talked about racism and I used Color the American spelling at least like 20 some times in my essay and they marked it wrong cause I'm from Canada and should be using Colour not Color

maybe dropping the u was our way of telling the british they no longer could rule us...it was our way of rebelling.

I don't know. check oed.com.

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My country was colonized by the British so we spell it colour.but you can spell it in any of these 2 ways. They are all correct. There are still many words which are spelt in different ways by different countries . Eg socialization for america and socialisation for the British.

It is the same with labor and labour, or aluminum and aluminium, either is correct, and whereas we got most of our grammar from Great Britain, it is colloquial and regional changes that creep in over time that change our spelling. Remember that it wasn't until Merriam Webster popularized his dictionary that there were real rules of spelling and grammar for most persons. Previously everyon spelt az thay wonted to and et was upto the reeder to figger aut whut they ment. In earlier times, only the gentry could even read
and thus pictographics were the norm: The Spreading Oak Inn would have a picture of a spreading oak, the Three Dragons pub would have a sign with three dragons, etc.