MattHall's comments

Words such as humour, colour, labour etc. are always spelled with the u in English except in America. How this came about is unclear as they usually derive from Latin where they do not have the u. Other European languages (such as Spanish) use some of these words, also without the u.
Oddly the u gets dropped in certain derived words such as humorous, coloration, laboratory in the British spelling.
Perhaps the u was added for some reason after the American colonies rebelled?? It is baffling more »