Grammar Rant No.2 - The Burnt/Burned Confusion

I've been 'corrected' many times on this by people who are so absolutely convinced that they're right that they're completely astounded when I explain just how wrong they are and still refuse to believe me. As it happened again just now I felt the need to write up a post on it to explain it to you all. There are many different kinds of these particular verbs, and as they're all irregular and used differently I'm afraid you need to learn each one individually.

Adjective Participles (layman's terms: describing words created from verbs):

burnt/spelt/learned(2 syllables)/past/spilt/spoilt

Examples: 'the toast is burnt', 'it's spelt wrong', 'he's well learned', 'in past times*', 'spilt milk', 'spoilt child'.

Past Participles (layman's terms: past tense verbs):

burned/spelled/learned/passed/spilled/spoiled

Examples: 'I burned the toast', 'I spelled it wrong', 'I learned something today', 'I passed the house', 'I spilled the milk', 'I spoiled my child'.

dwelt/dwelled

Examples: 'She dwelt in a small town', 'I dwelled on that for a while'

Both are acceptable past participles of the verb 'to dwell', but are used in different situations, 'dwelled' should be interchangable with 'pondered' and 'dwelt' with 'lived'.

Pluperfect Participles (layman's terms: complex past tense verbs):

burnt/spelt/learnt/passed/spilt/spoilt

Examples: 'I have burnt the toast', 'I have spelt it wrong', 'I would have passed him', 'I have spilt the milk', 'I've spoilt that child'

Adverbs:

past

Example: 'I walked past the house'.

Easy to tell when to use it - if there's another verb in the sentence (walked) then 'past' is correct, otherwise 'I passed the house' will do.

Verbs that only exist in '-t' form, not 'ed':

Crept/felt/meant/dreamt/leapt/dealt

*Completely unrelated homonym but something that annoys me nonetheless and I've just been reminded of by my own example - it's 'pastime', not 'pass-time'. It may have been derived from those two words but it is a separate word in its own right. Also, 'pass-time' looks stupid. Stop looking stupid.