On one hand what has the word "check" got to do with a piece of paper for banks? On the other hand, why make up another word? Looked around and looks like we just wanted to be different to each other. Oh, and fairly obvious we mix with french. Both come from latin, and had major wars for donkeys like (mixing it up tastic).
Found this BTW,
The difference between British and English spellings is a long story. For an old but good discussion of this see ‘The American Language’ by H. L. Mencken. In it he describes how many of the British and American spellings we see today are a result of the personal preferences of the great orthographers of the past on both sides of the Atlantic and that in many cases there was no rhyme or reason [well, maybe faulty or arbitrary reasoning] to a lot of it.
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“[[In Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 ]] he preferred what he called ‘Saxon’ spellings for what he conceived to be old English words, and thus ordained that ‘music,’ ‘critic,’ and ‘prosaic’ should have a final ‘k,’ though all three were actually borrowings from the Latin through the French. He decided for the’-our ending in words of the ‘honor,’ class [[and thus British/American: armour/armor, behaviour/behavior, colour/color, labour/labor, candour/candor, clamour/calmor, demenanour/demanor, favour/favor, flavour/flavor, honour/honor, humour/humor, labour/labor,odour/odor, rancour/rancor, rigour/rigor, rumor/rumour, splendour/splendor, tumour/tumor, vapour/vapor, vigour/vigor – and I believe that’s all of them!]]. When there was doubt, he proceeded with a ‘scholars reverence for antiquity,’ and gave his imprimatur [[‘stamp of approval’]] to many spellings based upon false etymologies and pointless analogies and it was easy . . .to point them out, e.g. such pairs as ‘deceit’ and ‘receipt,’ ‘moveable’ and ‘immovable,’ ‘sliness’ and ‘slyly,’ ‘deign’ and ‘disdeign.’ Even among ‘-our’ words he permitted ‘exterior’ to slip in alongside ‘interiour’, and ‘posterior’ alongside ‘anteriour.’ He also undertook reforms that failed to make their way. e.g., the reduction of the final ‘-ll’ to ‘l,’ leading to such forms as ‘downhil,’ ‘catcal,’ ‘unrol’ and ‘forstal.’ . . . . .
There is no evidence that his mandates were ever challenged on this side of the water until the Revolution. In 1768, to be sure, the ever busy and iconoclastic Benjamin Franklin had published ‘A Scheme for a New Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling,’. . . but his project was too extravagant to be adopted anywhere, or to have any appreciable influence. It was not until Noah Webster who finally achieved a divorce between English precept and example and American practice. . . . ”
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Mencken goes on and on, but the basic idea is that men like Johnson, Webster, Cobb, Worcester, etc. wrote dictionaries based on their beliefs which were sometimes relied on what they thought to be ‘authentic’ and sometimes on what they thought to be justified ‘reform.’ Some of their ideas gained acceptance (on one or both sides of the Atlantic) and some didn’t. And if you follow the evolutions closely it is just a maze of fits, changes, starts, stops, rechanges, . . . For example, Webster in his ‘American Spelling Book’ (1783) replaced ‘honour’ with ‘honor’ because Shakespeare had used the two interchangeably and he decided to go for simplicity. He also decided to drop all silent letters so that there would be no ‘b’ in ‘thumb,’ no ‘e’ in ‘determine,’ no ‘s’ in ‘island, no ‘a’ in ‘thread,’ ‘steady,’ or ‘ready, etc., etc. But these and many other ideas never took hold. And so the history of British and American spelling goes, and the British ended up with ‘cheque’ and the Americans ended up with ‘check’ (mostly)!
Cheers
I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
