British means belonging to the United Kingdom or its people. A British passport, British history, the British Isles.
It is always capitalised. British covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and is not a synonym for English — a mistake that irritates rather a lot of people. Strictly, Great Britain is the island of England, Scotland and Wales, and the United Kingdom adds Northern Ireland; British nationality covers all of it. The plural noun is the British, and a single person is a Briton or, informally, a Brit.
1adjectivebritishBelonging to the United Kingdom or its people.
“She holds a British passport and has never lived there.”
british is a nationality.
Old English
Brettisċ
Middle English
Brittish
English
British
English, today
british
British comes from Middle English Brittish, from Old English Brettisċ. The spelling with single -t- appears in the 13th century under the influence of Medieval Latin Britannicus, but spelling with -tt- persists alongside -t- during the 13th to at least 18th centuries. In reference to the island of Great Britain from ca. 1400 (Latin natio Anglica sive Britannica, Brittisshe occean 1398, the Britishe nacion 1548).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
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