"briar" vs. "brier" as main en-US spelling

[Tex2002ans]

In LibreOffice Bug #153402, Tina R mentioned:

• briar

is considered misspelled in the en-US dictionary.

SCOWL considers:

• brier

the main spelling, with -ar being a large + level 1 variant.

Personally, I think:

• -ar should be the main spelling for both en-US + en-GB.
• -er should be a variant for both.

(Note: It looks like en-GB is okay.)

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Stats

Word	In en_US	Found In	Notes	Should Include	Frequency	Newness
briar	NO	en_US-large	level 1 variant [v]	****	0.6977	1.3
brier	YES			***	0.3727	1.4
briars	NO	en_US-large	level 1 variant [v]	***	0.3389	1.5
briers	YES			***	0.2330	1.8
briary	NO	larger (size 80) SCOWL size [1]		**	0.0103	1.0
briery	NO	en_US-large		**	0.0283	2.2

Google N-grams

"briar" vs. "brier" vs. "briary" vs. "briery"

• American English
• British English

en-US popularity flipped from "brier" -> "briar" in ~1920. Now it's ~4x as popular.

en-GB always had "briar" ahead. Now it's ~3x as popular.

Dictionaries

Most dictionaries also label -ar as the main, with -er as the variant:

briar + briary

• M-W
• Lexico
• Macmillan
• Collins
• Oxford Learner's
• Longman's

brier + briery

• Dictionary.com
• American Heritage