Litre, Cheque, Louvre and Other British Spellings Explained

Litre is the British spelling of liter, the metric unit of volume equal to one cubic decimetre, or 1,000 cubic centimetres. Both spellings name the same unit and are pronounced the same way. The United States writes liter, while the UK, Canada, Australia and most other English-speaking countries write litre. Cheque and louvre follow the same pattern: British and Commonwealth forms of the American check and louver.

Last checked: October 29, 2026

What does litre mean?

A litre is a metric unit of volume equal to the space inside a cube that measures 10 centimetres on each side.

That cube is the cubic decimetre. Every litre holds exactly 1,000 millilitres or 0.001 cubic metres. The litre is not one of the seven SI base units. It is a non-SI unit officially accepted for use alongside the SI system, which is why you see it on milk cartons, fuel pumps and engine specifications around the world.

In IPA, British speakers say /ˈliːtə/ and American speakers say /ˈliːtər/. The only difference is the r sound, and that comes from accent, not spelling. A Canadian who writes litre still pronounces the final r.

Here’s how the word turns up in everyday British and Commonwealth English:

• “Petrol has gone up another four pence a litre since last week.”
• “Grab a two-litre bottle of lemonade for the party.”
• “The new hatchback has a 1.5-litre engine and still feels quick.”
• “You should drink a couple of litres of water on a hot hike.”

Notice the hyphen in “two-litre bottle” and “1.5-litre engine”. When the number and unit work together as an adjective before a noun, the hyphen keeps the phrase readable.

Litre or liter: which spelling is used where

Neither spelling is wrong. Each one is correct in its own variety of English, and the real mistake is mixing them in a single document. Use the spelling your readers expect.

Country or body	Spelling	Notes
United Kingdom	litre	Fuel, drinks and food labelling all use litre
Ireland	litre	Follows British spelling
Canada	litre	Canada follows British spelling for metric units even though it uses many American spellings elsewhere
Australia	litre	Standard in government and media style
New Zealand	litre	Standard
South Africa	litre	Standard
India	litre	British-influenced spelling
United States	liter	Used by NIST, the US standards body
BIPM (international SI brochure, English text)	litre	The international standards body uses the -re form

The Canada row surprises people. Canadian English often borrows from both sides of the Atlantic, so you’ll see Canadians write “color” in some contexts but almost always “litre” and “metre”. Fuel at Canadian gas stations is priced per litre, and the spelling on the pump matches.

Where the word litre comes from

The litre was born during the French Revolution, when France threw out a tangle of regional measures and built the metric system from scratch. French lawmakers introduced the litre in the 1790s as part of that new system.

They didn’t invent the name from nothing. Litre was adapted from litron, an older French measure of capacity for dry goods such as grain and salt. Litron goes back through Medieval Latin litra to the Greek litra, which was a Sicilian unit of weight and also the name of a coin.

English borrowed the word from French in 1797, according to standard etymological dictionaries. For its first decades in English it was spelled litre, the French way, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The split came later. Noah Webster, the American lexicographer, pushed for spellings that matched pronunciation more closely. His 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language and his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language promoted forms such as center and theater. Over the 19th century the -er pattern spread through American printing, and liter, meter and caliber followed. British English kept the French-derived -re endings.

How the definition has changed

The litre hasn’t always meant exactly one cubic decimetre.

1. 1901: The General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) redefined the litre as the volume of 1 kilogram of pure water at its maximum density. That made it slightly bigger than a cubic decimetre, by about 28 parts per million.
2. 1964: The CGPM dropped the water-based definition and declared the litre a special name for the cubic decimetre. That’s the definition still in force.
3. 1979: The CGPM approved a capital L as an alternative symbol alongside the lowercase l.

The tiny 1901 discrepancy mattered to scientists working with precise volumes, which is why the 1964 reset tied the unit back to a clean cubic measurement.

L or l: which symbol should you use?

Both are officially correct. The capital L was approved because a lowercase l is easy to misread as the numeral 1, especially in typefaces where the two look nearly identical. Compare “1 l” with “1 L” and the problem is obvious.

In the US, NIST recommends the capital L. Across Europe and the UK you’ll see both, and lowercase is still common on product labels, as in “500 ml”. The curly script ℓ that some people learned at school is not an official symbol, so avoid it in formal or technical writing.

How big is a litre? Conversions that matter

If you need a mental picture, a litre is roughly the size of a large carton of milk or juice. A standard UK wine bottle holds 75 centilitres, so a litre is a bit more than one bottle.

1 litre equals	Amount
Millilitres	1,000 mL
Cubic centimetres	1,000 cm³
Cubic inches	61.02 in³
US fluid ounces	33.81 fl oz
Imperial (UK) fluid ounces	35.20 fl oz
US liquid pints	2.11 pints
Imperial pints	1.76 pints
US liquid quarts	1.06 quarts
US gallons	0.264 gallons
Imperial gallons	0.220 gallons

The US and imperial figures don’t match because the two systems define their ounces, pints and gallons differently. A US gallon is 3.785 litres, while an imperial gallon is 4.546 litres. A US fluid ounce is about 29.57 mL and an imperial fluid ounce is about 28.41 mL. When a recipe or a fuel-economy figure comes from the other side of the Atlantic, check which system it uses before you convert.

The litre family

Metric prefixes attach to litre just as they do to metre and gram. Some of these units are everyday words; others turn up only in specific trades.

Unit	Symbol	Equal to	Where you’ll see it
Millilitre	mL or ml	0.001 L	Medicine doses, cosmetics, drinks cans
Centilitre	cL or cl	0.01 L	Spirits and wine bottles in the UK and EU (70 cl, 75 cl)
Decilitre	dL or dl	0.1 L	Some European recipes; blood test results such as g/dL
Litre	L or l	1 L	Fuel, bottled drinks, engine size
Hectolitre	hL or hl	100 L	Wine and beer production figures

In British spelling every one of these keeps the -re: millilitre, centilitre, decilitre, hectolitre. American spelling switches them all to -er.

Why British English keeps the -re ending

Litre belongs to a group of words that came into English from French and kept their French spelling in Britain. American English switched most of them to -er.

British spelling	American spelling	Meaning
litre	liter	Unit of volume
metre	meter	Unit of length
centre	center	Middle point
theatre	theater	Venue or art form
fibre	fiber	Thread or dietary material
calibre	caliber	Quality, or a gun’s bore size
sombre	somber	Dark or serious
spectre	specter	Ghost or looming threat
lustre	luster	Soft shine
sabre	saber	Curved sword
meagre	meager	Scanty

There are exceptions on the American side. Acre, massacre, mediocre and ogre keep the -re ending in the US as well. Switching them to -er would put the e after the c or g and suggest a soft sound, so “acer” might be read as “ay-ser”. The -re spelling protects the hard consonant.

Theatre is a half exception. Plenty of American venues put “Theatre” in their names because it looks more traditional, so you’ll find both spellings on the same American street.

There’s no matching trap for litre. No device called a “liter” exists in British English, so liter in a British text is simply the American spelling. Do watch for one common slip: litter (rubbish, or a group of puppies) is a different word, and a spellchecker won’t always catch it.

Cheque: the British word for a bank check

A cheque is a written order telling a bank to pay a stated sum from the writer’s account to a named person or organisation.

In the US, this is a check. In the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, it’s a cheque. The pronunciation is identical, and that’s the main thing to remember.

British English only uses cheque for the banking sense. Every other meaning of check stays the same:

• “Can you check the spelling before we print?” (verb, to verify)
• “She paid the deposit by cheque.” (banking)
• “I’ll do a quick check of the tyres.” (noun, an inspection)
• “That’s check, and nearly checkmate.” (chess)

The banking word grew out of check in the sense of a counterfoil or a means of control, which itself traces back to the chess term. The chess word came into English through Old French eschec, ultimately from the Persian shāh, meaning king. The distinctive British spelling cheque appeared in the 18th century and is generally thought to have been influenced by exchequer, the old name for the royal treasury.

Cheques have become far less common in Britain, but they haven’t disappeared. The UK’s Payments Council once set a target of 2018 for winding down the cheque clearing system. After pushback from charities, older people’s groups and small businesses, it abandoned the plan in July 2011. British households and firms still write cheques, just much less often than they used to.

Compounds keep the spelling too: chequebook, cheque card, traveller’s cheque. One related word causes doubt. Chequered, meaning patterned in squares or having a mixed history (“a chequered past”), is British; Americans write checkered.

Louvre and louvres: slats, vents and the museum

A louvre is one of a set of angled, parallel slats fitted in a door, window, shutter or vent so that air and some light can pass through while rain and direct sunlight are kept out.

The plural is louvres, and the adjective is louvred, as in louvred doors or louvred shutters. American English writes louver, louvers and louvered.

Some examples:

• “The wardrobe has louvred doors so your clothes don’t get musty.”
• “Angle the louvres down to stop the afternoon glare.”
• “The car’s bonnet has louvres to let engine heat escape.”
• “We fitted an aluminium louvre roof over the patio.”

The word has a long history in English. In medieval buildings, a louvre was a turret or opening on a roof that let smoke out from a central hearth, often fitted with slanted boards to keep rain away. English took the word from Old French in the Middle Ages. Its origin before Old French is uncertain; etymologists have proposed several sources, but none is settled.

The Musée du Louvre in Paris shares the spelling, but the name of the palace has its own disputed origin. No proven link exists between the museum’s name and the architectural louvre, so be careful with explanations online that connect the two with confidence.

Other British spellings that trip people up

Litre, cheque and louvre are only a small part of the ins and outs of British spelling. These pairs cause the most trouble in real writing:

• colour / color, flavour / flavor, honour / honor: British English keeps the -our ending.
• programme / program: Britain uses programme for a TV show or a schedule of events, but program for computer software.
• tyre / tire: In Britain, tyre is the rubber on a wheel and tire is only the verb meaning to grow weary.
• kerb / curb: Kerb is the edge of a pavement; curb is the verb meaning to restrain.
• storey / story: A storey is a floor of a building; a story is a tale.
• licence / license: British English uses licence for the noun and license for the verb. Practice and practise split the same way.
• aluminium / aluminum: This difference is in the word itself as well as its spelling. Britain adds the extra syllable.
• grey / gray: Grey is standard in Britain and gray in the US.
• travelled / traveled: British English doubles the l before -ed and -ing in words like travel, cancel and label.

One point surprises many readers: -ize is not purely American. Oxford University Press, among others, uses organize and realize in British texts. That house style is known as Oxford spelling. Most British newspapers and many publishers prefer -ise, but both endings are acceptable in British English as long as you’re consistent.

FAQ

Is it spelled liter or litre?

Both are correct. Liter is the American spelling, and litre is the spelling used in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa and India. Use whichever matches the rest of your writing.

How much is 1 liter in ounces?

One litre equals about 33.81 US fluid ounces or about 35.20 imperial fluid ounces. The numbers differ because US and imperial ounces are slightly different sizes. If a recipe comes from the US, use 33.8.

Is it liter or litre in Canada?

Canada uses litre. Canadian English follows British spelling for metric units, so you’ll see litre, millilitre and metre on product labels, fuel pumps and government material.

What does 1 litre mean?

One litre is the volume of a cube measuring 10 centimetres on each side. That equals 1,000 millilitres, 1,000 cubic centimetres or one cubic decimetre. A litre of pure water weighs almost exactly 1 kilogram, which makes the unit easy to picture in everyday use.

Is cheque pronounced differently from check?

No. Both are pronounced CHEK. The spelling changes only for the banking meaning in British and Commonwealth English.

What is the plural of louvre?

The plural is louvres, and something fitted with them is louvred. In American English, the forms are louvers and louvered.

About this article

RP

Written by Rosalind Petrie

Rosalind Petrie writes Star Dictionary's guides to word meanings, origins, idioms and usage, from everyday definitions and pronunciation to commonly confused words and grammar questions. She checks each entry against established dictionaries, historical citation records and usage guides, and she cares about giving readers clear examples they can actually use in a sentence.

• Fact-checked by Maureen Talbot against the sources listed below before publication.
• Published October 29, 2026

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2. Noah websters spelling wins and fails (merriam-webster.com)
3. en.wikipedia.org
4. en.wikipedia.org
5. bipm.org
6. sizes.com