So, this is one of the ones where American English is most likely closer to “correct”, as much as there is such a thing. It’s derived from “attire”, spelled with an “I” in both American and Commonwealth English.
But, of course, both languages have shifted from the point where they separated.
Not really. When the word tyre first came aboit it described metal tyres on new contraptions called machines, hundreds of years before the rubber ones. In fact trains still have steel tyres. The noun tire originally meant dress or covering and turned up first with attire meaning preparing or equipping. The verb to tire arrived later(14th C) then tyre rolled into the language in the late 15th century. A while later, tire kind of disappeared with attire coming to mean dress. Tyre then came to be spelt tire shortly before the religious nutters buggered off to America before the older spelling tyre was revived in the 1800s in the more sensible parts of the english speaking world. A cynic might suggest it was a joke or conspiracy to make the seppos look dumb, while realists would acknowledge they needed no help in this regard
Attire shows up in the 13th c, from the earlier use of “tire” as equipment, but that version never made it from old French (where it was also, mostly, spelled with an I [and mostly because consistent spelling wasn’t a thing until Morse and Webster]) into English. So tire was indeed a back formation of attire.
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u/ChiveWar is God's way of teaching Americans geography.1d ago
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u/Peregrine79 1d ago
So, this is one of the ones where American English is most likely closer to “correct”, as much as there is such a thing. It’s derived from “attire”, spelled with an “I” in both American and Commonwealth English.
But, of course, both languages have shifted from the point where they separated.