User:JackLumber~enwiktionary/-xion / -ction

The spellings connexion, inflexion, deflexion, reflexion are now somewhat rare in everyday British usage, but are not known at all in the U.S: the more common connection, inflection, deflection, reflection have almost become the standard internationally. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the older spellings are more etymologically conservative, since these four words actually derive from the Latin root -xio. The U.S. usage derives from Webster who discarded -xion in favor of -ction for analogy with such verbs as connect.

Connexion has found preference again amongst recent British government initiatives such as Connexions (the national careers and training scheme for school early leavers). Until the early 1980s, The Times of London also used connexion as part of its house style. It is still used in legal texts and British Methodism retains the eighteenth century spelling connexion to describe its national organisation, for historical reasons.

In both forms, complexion (which comes from the stem complex) is standard and complection is not. However, the adjective complected (as in "dark complected"), although sometimes objected to, can be used as an alternative to complexioned in the U.S. but is quite unknown in this sense in the UK, although there is an extremely rare usage to mean complicated (OED). Note, however, that crucifiction is simply an error in either orthography; crucifixion is the correct spelling.