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I hear a lot of people saying "Send me an invite". I always thought that it was an 'invitation'. Is "sending one an invite" accepted usage? Or is it incorrect? If I need to get my wedding invitation printed, should it read "Wedding Invitation" or a "Wedding Invite"? Is this a US/UK usage difference?

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Invite has been in use as a colloquial form of invitation since at least the mid-seventeenth century. There’s nothing wrong with it in the right place, but in formal contexts such as a printed card invitation would be the word to use.

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Barrie, do you have a source for the seventeenth century usage? Intrigued. – Lunivore May 25 '12 at 9:44
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@Lunivore: ‘Bishop Cranmer . . . gives him an earnest invite to England.’ From ‘The alliance of divine offices’ by Hamon l’Estrange (1659). The OED has this subsequent citation dated 1778 from Fanny Burney: ‘Every body Bowed, & accepted the invite but me . . . for I have no Notion of snapping at invites from the Great.’ – Barrie England May 25 '12 at 9:58
Nice, thank you! – Lunivore May 25 '12 at 10:04
+1 Brilliant as always. Barrie you are diamond old chap, I admire your knowledge and patience to explain to people like me. – speedyGonzales May 25 '12 at 18:57
@speedyGonzales: You're most kind. – Barrie England May 25 '12 at 19:00
up vote 3 down vote

Invitation is the more accepted noun to use.

Using invite as a noun is informal. I've found it prevalent in the U.S. and internet culture, though it's growing here in the U.K. too.

I suspect that the growth in usage comes from internet applications, particularly the developer-driven Facebook. Developers don't like to type or read any more text than they need to, and invitation is longer and harder to spell. We're so lazy. I apologise.

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Using invite is informal, but it is not slang. Barrie England has it right. – Qube May 25 '12 at 9:06
Qube, you're right, edited accordingly. Relevant: english.stackexchange.com/questions/29720/… – Lunivore May 25 '12 at 9:44
+1 sweetie, I think you are the only one that has shown us one of the modern use of invite. If older word used with new modern meaning is slang is not very clear from my point of view as language is not something constant and not moving and developing every day. – speedyGonzales May 25 '12 at 19:03

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