Tumor vs. tumour

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Grammarist

For the noun referring to an abnormal tissue growth, tumor is the preferred spelling in American English. Tumour is the standard spelling outside North America.

Tumour is one of numerous -our-ending words that lost the in American English at some point during the 19th century. In this case, the was dropped for good by around 1880, though tumour has never fully disappeared from U.S. writing, and in fact a few medical publishers still prefer it.

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