British English (or
BrEn,
BrE,
BE,
en-UK or
en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the
English language used in the
United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere. The
Oxford English Dictionary applies the term to English "as spoken or written in the
British Isles; esp[ecially] the forms of English usual in
Great Britain", reserving "
Hiberno-English" for the "English language as spoken and written in
Ireland". Nevertheless, Hiberno-English forms part of the broad British English continuum. Others, such as the
Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, define it as the "
English language as it spoken and written in England. " The
European Union uses British English as its standard variety of English.
There are slight regional variations in formal written English in the United Kingdom. For example, although the words
wee and
little are interchangeable in some contexts,
wee (as an adjective) is almost exclusively written by some people from some parts of northern Great Britain (and especially
Scotland) or from
Northern Ireland, whereas in
Southern England and
Wales,
little is used predominantly. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in
written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term
British English. The forms of
spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken, so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the
Oxford Guide to World English, "For many people... especially in England [
British English] is
tautologous," and it shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word
British, and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity. " The term "British English" is sometimes used as a synonym for "
Commonwealth English"; that is, English as spoken and written in the
Commonwealth of Nations.