What is the language "British"?

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

(Sorry, I was overzealous in cleaning my maildir and can't find the 
beginning of this thread) but I seem to remember that the OP objected to 
the use of "British" as opposed to "English".

Granted, this is from an American dictionary but it does show that 
"British" is an acceptable American usage.

 From Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary:

Briticism, n. ...peculiar to British English.
British, n.
   1. British English
   2. the language of the ancient Britons


And certain to fan flames:

Since we were also discussing the -our vs. -or we have this.  An excerpt 
from H. L. Mencken's 1921 "American English"

The logical superiority of American spelling is well exhibited by its 
persistent advance in the face of all this hostility at home and abroad. 
The English objection to our simplifications, as Brander Matthews once 
pointed out, is not wholly or even chiefly etymological; its roots lie, 
to borrow James Russell Lowell’s phrase, in an esthetic hatred burning 
“with as fierce a flame as ever did theological hatred.” There is 
something inordinately offensive to English purists in the very thought 
of taking lessons from this side of the water, particularly in the 
mother-tongue.

Ouch!

:m)