Offence or offense?
In American English write offense; in British and Commonwealth English, offence. offence is a noun meaning “UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada standard spelling of offense”; offense is a noun meaning “A crime or sin”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) offense is about 2.0 times as common as offence.
What is the difference between offence and offense?
| offence | offense | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada standard spelling of offense | USA crime or sin USAn affront, injury, or insult |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | offences | offenses |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /əˈfɛns/ /ˈɔf.ɛns/ /ˈɑf.ɛns/ |
| Region | no label | US |
| In writing | 9.1 times per million words | 18 times per million words |
Sources: offence and offense 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 offence and offense
offence
- 1
UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada standard spelling of offense
offense
- 1
USA crime or sin
- 2
USAn affront, injury, or insult
- 3
USThe state of being offended or displeased; anger; displeasure
- 4
USA strategy and tactics employed when in position to score; contrasted with defense
- 5
USThe portion of a team dedicated to scoring when in position to do so; contrasted with defense
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, offence or offense?
offence appears 9.1 times per million words; offense 18 times per million words.
offence 9.1 times per million wordsoffense 18 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 offence vs offense?
“offence vs offense” is searched about 8,100 times a month on Google and 380 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“offense vs offence”, “offence or offense”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.