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Often when I am writing emails or any other documents, I would like to use the irregular forms of dream (dreamt) or learn (learnt). But the computer spellcheckers always underline these words as being “wrong”, including right now on this very question that I am writing !

However, I know I have seen the words before. Don't know where, but surely I don’t have a habit of making up words of my own. Also, I believe that checking the Using English website confirms that the words do exist and should be correct?

Can someone please clear up what this is all about, and why (some?) spellchecking software treats dreamt and learnt as incorrect?

tchrist
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James C
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  • Could you provide some more information on your spellchecker, since mine accepts both (and it is set to BrE)... – oerkelens Jul 29 '14 at 13:15
  • You must have an American spell-checker (even though these past tenses are used by a number of Americans, as well). – Peter Shor Jul 29 '14 at 13:23

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According to this article at Oxford Dictionaries online, there is a difference between the spelling in American and British English:

These are alternative forms of the past tense and past participle of the verb learn. ‘Learnt’ is more common in British English, and ‘learned’ in American English. There are a number of verbs of this type (burn, dream, kneel, lean, leap, spell, spill, spoil etc.). They are all irregular verbs, and this is a part of their irregularity.

So you may want to check which dialect of English your spellchecker is using.

tchrist
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oerkelens
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    Something still smells fishy. Dreamt is perfectly common even in North American English. And I don’t get any red squiggles under learnt when I use it, even though my settings are configured for cisatlantic English usage. – tchrist Jul 29 '14 at 13:12
  • @tchrist - That is indeed fishy... mine accepts both forms as well. As an aside, I do get squigglies for spellchecker and not for spell-checker... – oerkelens Jul 29 '14 at 13:16
  • @tchrist I suspect dreamt is only common in North America because of Shakespeare. And learnt is only common here in the American South. I do get squiggles for dreamt and learnt and the spellings look archaic to me. – Elliott Frisch Jul 29 '14 at 13:20
  • The spellchecker matter is an interesting one. In general, British and Irish publishers retain hyphens in “new” compound words longer than North American ones do, but I am rather surprised yours deemed it “wrong”. I know you know better, but the OP’s question does make me wonder how it is that so many people have come to trust the judgement of a dodgy program over their own good sense. As a complete aside, dreamt is virtually unique in English in that it ends in ‑mt. The only other word that comes close is that the rare transumpt was sometimes spelt transumt during the 17ᵗʰ century. – tchrist Jul 29 '14 at 13:21
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    @tchrist - With me (and many others) not being native English speaker(s), it shouldn't be hard to understand why a dodgy program can place doubt over oneself =) – James C Jul 29 '14 at 13:26
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    @ElliottFrisch I find your “Shakespeare theory” summarily unlikely, given that never once did the Bard pen the word undreamt anywhere that we know of. He did, however, quite notably write in Act IV Scene 4 of The Winter’s Tale the following: “A cause more promising / Than a wild dedication of yourselves / To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain / To miseries enough; no hope to help you, / But as you shake off one to take another;” — so I don’t have any idea why you mentioned him. – tchrist Jul 29 '14 at 13:29
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    @tchrist There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt* of in your philosophy.*
    • Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
     – Elliott Frisch Jul 29 '14 at 13:31
  • @ElliottFrisch Oh right: I was only searching for instances of undreamt not of dreamt. While it is true that Shakespeare — the man who never spelt his own name the same way twice in a row :) — indeed wrote dreamt fourteen times, it is also true and perhaps more important to notice that he also wrote dreamed twice as well as dream’d *seventeen* times, doubtless because Emerson’s hobgoblins of foolish inconsistency had not yet been invented during the Elizabethan Era. I therefore reckon his overall final tally stands at 19 to 14. :) – tchrist Jul 29 '14 at 13:35
  • @tchrist Does that vary by folio? – Elliott Frisch Jul 29 '14 at 13:37
  • @tchrist The bard appears to have cared not for spelling. Dreamed and dreamt in Much Ado about Nothing. – Elliott Frisch Jul 29 '14 at 13:44
  • @ElliottFrisch Right: spelling just wasn’t a “thing” for him. I recommend we all follow his dreamt-vs-dreamed variability. Maybe check here but that’s but a single spelling per work, not multiple versions thereof. – tchrist Jul 29 '14 at 13:50
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    The bard was not alone. Nobody cared for speling. Spelling was as individual and variable as handwriting. Standard spelling didn't become a mass memorization scheme until much later. Now we use it as a class marker. – John Lawler Jul 29 '14 at 14:42