Polarised or polarized?
In American English write polarized; in British and Commonwealth English, polarised. polarised is a verb meaning “simple past and past participle of polarise”; polarized is an adjective meaning “Having a distinctive polarization”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) polarized is about 6.0 times as common as polarised.
What is the difference between polarised and polarized?
| polarised | polarized | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, verb | adjective, verb |
| Meaning | USHaving a distinctive polarization USOf a group or situation, being at two or more extremes | |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈpəʊ.lə.ɹaɪzd/ |
| Region | UK | US |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words | 2.0 times per million words |
Sources: polarised and polarized 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 polarised and polarized
polarized
- 1
USHaving a distinctive polarization
- 2
USOf a group or situation, being at two or more extremes
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, polarised or polarized?
polarised appears about once in every 3 million words; polarized 2.0 times per million words.
polarised about once in every 3 million wordspolarized 2.0 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 polarised vs polarized?
“polarised vs polarized” 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 (“polarized vs polarised”, “polarised or polarized”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.