Smelt/Smell?

AnonymousRead the following in a book review:

"As Richard Perren says, the meat industy has smelled liked money for a long time."

Should it not be smelt instead of smelled? "Smelled" is perfect in AmE.

Hi Rob

Perhaps 'smelt' is used in British English, but I don't think I've ever heard anything but 'smelled' in American English.
The only problem in your sentence is the word 'liked' -- it should be 'like'.

Yo Rob

Smelt is indeed correct. Why? Because your sentence makes use of 'has', which is a verb. For instance: "He smelled the roses"; "He has smelt the roses".

Spongebob

Hi Spongebob

I would use smell as a regular verb. That means saying "He smelled the roses" and "He has smelled the roses" would both be completely grammatical in the US.

Hmm, He smelt the roses is also correct right?

And, this is the first time I have heard of the word 'smelled''..

Hi Spectacled-Girl

Since I'm American, I can only assume that smelt is the past participle form of the verb to smell used in British English. The Oxford and Cambridge Dictionaries list both smelled and smelt.

As a verb, I would only use smelt as an infinitve meaning this:

to smelt:

VERB:	Inflected forms: smelt·ed, smelt·ing, smelts
TRANSITIVE VERB:	To melt or fuse (ores) in order to separate the metallic constituents.
INTRANSITIVE VERB:	To melt or fuse. Used of ores.

Source

Smelt is an alternative to smelled and is preferable, though not obligatory, in British English. At the end of the day, the sound difference is only between [t] and [d]. The verbs that follow a this pattern of having regular / irregular alternatives with this t/d sound ending are:
infinitive irreg past tense and participle regular past tense and participle

burn	burnt	burnt burned
dream	dreamt	dreamt dreamed
lean	leant	leant leaned
leap	leapt	leapt leaped
learn	learnt	learnt learned
smell	smelt	smelt smelled
spell	spelt	spelt spelled
spill	spilt	spilt spilled
spoil	spoilt	spoilt spoiled

Smelled is correct and the "preferred" use of the past tense of smell, but in his excellent dissertation on God versus science, Albert Einstein twice used the word "smelt" as the past tense of smell. Microsoft word check did not identify it as either a spelling or a grammatical error.



Having been raised in Kentucky, we used the word smelt frequently. Living in the southwest, I used we had been mispronouncing the word spelled, but maybe the word smelt is more commonly used in the south. If it's the preferred term the genius Albert Einstein, I would have your professor return whatever points he subtracted for it.

The past perfect tense of the verb 'to smell' is either' smelled' or 'smelt' in the English language as used in the UK and throughout the English speaking world with the exception of The US (and sometimes Canada)

When the Americans devised (or is that devized) their own dictionary to diffentiate themselves from the English they simplified these irregualr verb endings onlly to use to use the regular endings of verbs -ed for the past tense It is the same as the word 'bent' I've never head the word 'bended' used in Britain. Does it even exist in America?

Their computer programs, eoffering a British version still won't recognise the fact that in UK English we use the more common alternative endings of words like spelt, misspelt and they try to correct us regularly even though they to tell us this is British English

Their spellcheckers ( on a UK setting) regulary tell me I have misspelt words like realise and finalise when I KNOW I am correct

Barbe Blanche

rttx2