English has no official body regulating its grammar or vocabulary.

Many major languages have a formal institution charged with defining correct usage. French has the Académie française, which rules on approved vocabulary and grammar, and Spanish has the Real Academia Española, which publishes the authoritative dictionary and style guide for the language. English has never had an equivalent body, despite several historical proposals, including one championed by Jonathan Swift in the early 18th century, that went nowhere.

Instead, English usage is set by convention: dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary describe how the language is actually used rather than legislate how it should be used, and they update accordingly as usage shifts. That decentralized approach is part of why English absorbs new words and spelling variants so readily, and why “correct” English can differ meaningfully between the US, UK, Australia, and elsewhere without any central authority to arbitrate.