Often when I’m playing Scrabble, I’m testing every normally -ed word with the -t variant to see if I can make it fit, but only a small percentage of them gets accepted or is in the dictionary. Some seem self-explanatory, but others seem arbitrary, and feel like hangovers from an old mediaeval version of the language.
An example of a self-explanatory variation would be “burned” and “burnt”. One is the past particle of the verb to burn, the other is a description of the quality of having been burned. Although interchangeable, one generally feels more appropriate than the other in specific circumstances. I’m ok with that particular t/ed switcheroo. It’s stuff like the following that I’m confused about:
- Vexed/Vext
- Fixed/Fixt
- Flocked/Flockt
- Picked/Pickt
- Skinned/Skint (borderline case, “skint” has another meaning)
Those are all in the dictionary, but these aren’t:
- Backed/Backt
- Racked/Rackt
- Packed/Packt
- Fucked/Fuckt
I can’t for the life of me figure out the rule, if such a rule even exists.
Cheers!
Vext is present tense whereas vexed is supposed to be used in the past tense. I’m not an English major though, so 50/50 on whether that’s actually correct or not but that’s how I learned it.
In short, the ed prefix notates past tense normally.
Ie
Fuck Fucked Duck Ducked Touch Touched
It’s just that English spelling is really fucking weird because 1/3 of our words are German. 1/3 is French 1/6 is Greek and 1/8 is Latin. Also, we’re using the wrong alphabet to spell our works. This alphabet was made for the Romans who spoke Latin. The English people invented runes which much more accurately map to the words.