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Past tense of “spell”

🔤 To say the letters of a word in order.

Number 109 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both spelt. Recognising it is the priority.

British and American English

British English prefers the short -t ending, spelt; American English regularises it to spelled. Both are correct, and a whole group behaves this way — burn, learn, dream, smell, spell — so learning one teaches you the rest.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, spelt. Half the work disappears: learn spell · spelt and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — She spelt her name for the officer. is the past simple, Have I spelt your name right? is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

There is no tidy rule connecting spell to spelt — this is a verb you memorise as a pair and stop analysing. The consolation is that it is a pair and not a trio: spelled is the only wrong answer worth guarding against.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: