Gramer Girl here, I'm Minyeon Fogarty and this week I have a quick and dirty tip about

the difference between burned and burnt.

And in honor of the upcoming spelling bee, a meaty middle about the history of English spelling.

Let's start with the burn.

I used to be a terrible cook.

And problem was that I would get distracted and end up burning things a lot.

But in such cases, should I say dinner is burned?

Or should I say it's burnt?

And why do we have two forms of that word anyway?

Well, burned and burnt are both acceptable past tense forms of the verb to burn.

But which one you use depends on where you live, because the verb burned is the much more

common form in the United States and Canada.

Burnt and burnt are used more interchangeably as a verb in Britain.

So I tend to think of burnt as a British form of the verb.

And the Oxford English Dictionary, which takes a British approach, given that it's published

in Oxford, says that burnt as a verb is always permissible, but burned is slightly archaic

and somewhat more formal than burnt.

So you might say mom burned the muffins in the US, but mom burnt the crumpets in the

UK.

Also, a dictionary of modern English usage says that the two forms can have slightly different

meanings.

For example, if you say a house burnt down, that implies it happened quickly.

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