British English is a broad term for the English Language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom. It may also be used to refer to the language spoken throughout all the British Isles.[3]
There are slight regional variations in formal written English in the United Kingdom. For example, although the words wee and little are interchangeable in some contexts, wee (as an adjective) is almost exclusively used by some people from some parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland, whereas in England and Wales, little is used predominantly. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English. The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken,[4][clarification needed] so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English, "For many people . . . especially in England [British English] is tautologous," and it shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word British, and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity."[5] The term "British English" is sometimes used as a synonym for "Commonwealth English"; that is, English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth of Nations, with the exception of those Commonwealth countries with their own distinctive dialects such as Australia and Canada.