Wikipedia is also very US centric. I remember editing a horse related page to include UK, Australian, New Zealand and continental European references and the self-styled owner of the page relentlessly reverted my edits until I called her out that the web is international. Even then she changed the reference to an oblique addendum with the US centric definition remaining central.
If you ever think that nobody cares, try editing a Wikipedia page…
Add me to the lunge group. I spent a year as a working student at an eventing (way back before it was called eventing) barn in England and have used the term ever since, despite being corrected numerous times over the years.
My thoughts exactly…can’t have fun jokes with longe!
I use the words longe and longeing, and always have. Longing is what I do at the pastry shop, lunging looks like a weird word having to do with respiration, lungeing sounds like what you do at CrossFit, and lounging or loungeing have to do with the beach and omg I need a vacation.
I was educated in both the US and the UK, so who the heck knows where I picked up longeing. Although I thought the word was related somehow to long-lining, which would make longeing very rational, and lungeing not so much.
To me, “lunge” and “lungeing” are like “eventing” - it doesn’t mean anything to do with horses, really.
But of course as long as the people who use it most are happy, it doesn’t matter. It’s just curious that of all the words that might have been adopted for that term, that word that has nothing to do with the subject is what people use.
But the real question: do you pronounce them differently? I see in my mind ‘longe’ pronounced ever so slightly snootily 
I think I remember battling the o versus u internal dilemma many years ago and just decided on lunge.
I remember when it was ‘longe’ and I had a hard time learning to say ‘lunge’, but that’s what it is now so, reluctantly, that’s what I say.
born and raised in the US and have never been to europe … and use Lunge…but I’ve always thought I didn’t belong here…haha.
I have had horses since 1976 and it has always been Lunge . Maybe it depends on what part of the country you are in? I was in CA at the time.
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