Spilled vs. Spilt

I wrote a story that utilizes a cliche, horror of horrors (no that's not the one), and it was brought to my attention the spelling of a word by one of my lovely critique partners. The cliche is "don't cry over spilled milk," but I wrote "it looked like spilt milk." So do I spell it S-P-I-L-L-E-D or S-P-I-L-T? 

So I thought I'd do a little research and share with everyone. According to The Grammarist, spilt was once accepted as the past tense usage for spill. Very interesting graphs that show when the change took place. Now it is more commonly accepted to use spilled.

Spill is actually considered an irregular verb. Among others. A regular verb is one that uses "-ed" as an ending to make the verb past tense. Such as end (I ended the game), jump (I jumped on the bed), or toss (I tossed it in the trash). Irregular verbs end differently, such as write (I wrote a story), run (I ran in a race), and eat (I ate all the grapes). It's no wonder we hear children say, "I writed, I runned, and I eated." (I'm constantly correcting my 5-year-old daughter. She's still learning). That's part of why we lovely Americans want to write spilled, burned, etc. because the regular verbs are easier to say and spell.

spilled - spilt

burned - burnt

learned - learnt

smelled - smelt

spelled - spelt

spoiled - spoilt

dreamed - dreamt

leaped - leapt

kneeled - knelt

These verbs are considered irregular. This is for the past simple and past participle form of the verbs. Both spellings are acceptable in both forms of English, however the irregular "-t" ending is more acceptable in British English, and the regular "-ed" ending is more acceptable in American English.

Part of the confusion, I believe, is that we sometimes like to pronounce these words with the "-t" sound and therefore want to spell it to match the pronunciation. Anyway, I have spelt my last word for this post because I dreamt about the toothfairy and I leapt for joy. I hope you learnt something. Have fun!

Keep on keepin' on...