Honored or honoured?
In American English write honored; in British and Commonwealth English, honoured. honored is an adjective meaning “US standard spelling of honoured”; honoured is an adjective meaning “Respected, having received honour”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) honored is about 2.5 times as common as honoured.
What is the difference between honored and honoured?
| honored | honoured | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, verb | adjective, verb |
| Meaning | USUS standard spelling of honoured | UKRespected, having received honour |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈɑnɚd/ /ˈɒnəd/ |
| Region | US | UK |
| In writing | 13 times per million words | 5.0 times per million words |
Sources: honored and honoured in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of honored and honoured
honored
- 1
USUS standard spelling of honoured
honoured
- 1
UKRespected, having received honour
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, honored or honoured?
honored appears 13 times per million words; honoured 5.0 times per million words.
honored 13 times per million wordshonoured 5.0 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search honored vs honoured?
“honored vs honoured” is searched about 320 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“honoured vs honored”, “honored or honoured”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.