‘These yours?’ asked my husband with his back to me, his head ostrichised in a cardboard box and a sheaf of envelopes in his upraised hand. They were, indeed, a bundle of letters from 1999 caught up in his circulars from cricket clubs and rubbish from pharmaceutical companies. He was tidying up four years late.
One of the letters came from Mr James Fairbairn who wondered what had happened to -ize as a suffix. He found it was authorized on his American spellcheck, but anathematised on his UK English spellcheck. Looking through the Guardian, Radio Times, Strathearn Herald and Perthshire Advertiser for 1971 (a touch of my husband there, to have those about the house), he found no verbs ending -ize, but in his Penguin English Dictionary (1969) found plenty.
Dr R.W. Burchfield in the New Fowler’s gives a list of words that must be spelt with -ise: advertise, advise, apprise, arise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, demise, despise, devise, dis[en]franchise, disguise, enfranchise, enterprise, excise, exercise, franchise, improvise, incise, merchandise, prise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise and televise.
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