Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

acclimated vs. acclimatised

In some recent fiction books written by American authors, I have seen the word “acclimated” as in “...she took a day to become acclimated to her new area.”

Shouldn’t this word be “acclimatised” or is this a case of American’s using one word and New Zealanders using another, both for the same purpose?

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"...acclimate, acclimatise, and acclimatize all mean the same thing."
I completely agree. There are plenty of such similar words in English, and we should be prepared to understand all of them. Some of the differences are very slight, such as in the case of "judgement" and "judgment".
Furthermore, I have read that for reasonably comprehensive dictionaries, you need 100,000 words in French, but you need 200,000 words in German, and you need 300,000 words in English!
Just give your acknowledgment/ acknowledgement to these facts. English is a very rich language.

D. A. Wood May-17-2018

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According to my research, acclimate, acclimatise, and acclimatize all mean the same thing. These are just regional differences. In the US, I mostly hear "acclimate," and it's always in the passive form, "be acclimated."

Dyske May-08-2018

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Acclimate is an older word, apparently, held onto by Americans while in Britain, Australia and New Zealand (etc) we moved on and acclimatise has long been preferred. Think too of Fall And Autumn - in Britain we stopped saying Fall centuries ago, but Americans stuck with it. To my ears, acclimate sounds clunky, but that could be because I'm more used to the British English version. Also, aesthetically, acclimatise sounds more agreeable to my ears.

user111736 Jan-03-2023

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