Memorise or memorize?
In American English write memorize; in British and Commonwealth English, memorise. memorise is a verb meaning “Non-Oxford British English standard spelling of memorize”; memorize is a verb meaning “To fully learn so as to have entirely available to the memory; to learn by…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) memorize is about 6.0 times as common as memorise.
What is the difference between memorise and memorize?
| memorise | memorize | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb | verb |
| Meaning | To fully learn so as to have entirely available to the memory; to learn by heart, commit to memory | |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | memorises, memorising, memorised | memorizes, memorizing, memorized |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈmɛm.əˌɹaɪ̯z/ /ˈmem.əˌɹɑɪ̯z/ |
| Region | UK | no label |
| In writing | about once in every 4 million words | 1.7 times per million words |
Sources: memorise and memorize 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 memorise and memorize
memorize
- 1
To fully learn so as to have entirely available to the memory; to learn by heart, commit to memory
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, memorise or memorize?
memorise appears about once in every 4 million words; memorize 1.7 times per million words.
memorise about once in every 4 million wordsmemorize 1.7 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 memorise vs memorize?
“memorise vs memorize” is searched about 20 times a month on Google (Bing reports no separate figure) in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“memorize vs memorise”, “memorise or memorize”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.