Is the brat spoilt or spoiled? The debate rages on

Spoiler alert: the following column will touch on yoghurt, cyclones, Prince Harry and spoil (the verb). A verb which means to plunder or pamper, to wreck or turn rancid. A veteran too, spoil is some 700 years old, though you’d never guess by its recent nimbleness.

Have you noticed? Marjorie Williamson has, the reader grappling with the verb’s past tense: “Writing to friends, I will use the word spoilt meaning overindulged. Though my spellcheck keeps wanting to change it to spoiled, which to me means became rotten, which is totally inappropriate. What are your thoughts?”

Veruca Salt, patron saint of spoilt – or should that be spoiled – brats.Credit:

In short, can spoiled yoghurt be spoilt, or a spoilt child as brattish as their spoiled sibling? I swept local news for the verdict. Or the vibe. Tropical Cyclone Alfred, says the Ballina Times, left “Food Spoiled, Connections Cut”. By way of endorsement, a new phone app developed by the Uni of NSW can detect “spoiled milk”, says BeanScene magazine.

Hobart tourists, on the other hand, are spoilt for choice, declared this paper’s Traveller section. Just as Canberra coach Ricky Stuart ripped into his Raiders a few seasons ago, calling their Cowboys loss “a real precious, spoilt type of game”.

That’s that then. Spoiled applies to food, while spoilt implies pampered or too many options. If only English was so exact. By and large, that distinction holds good; however, my same web-snoop unearthed spoilt cheese and spoiled brats. Stuck in the middle, the Kidspot section on the News Corp site had a bob each way, with one article arguing against gifts for a four-year-old’s party, that toddler both spoilt and spoiled across two sentences.

Spoil is not the only verb with two past-tense guises. Burn and smell also struggle to be distinct in their alternative forms. Dwell and dream. At least Ned Kelly was hanged, and Nolan’s Ned Kelly series hung. A word can be spelt of course, while a racehorse spelled. Just as a learned artisan has logically learnt their craft. To poets the candle is lighted, compared to a layperson’s lit.

Returning us to the mess of spoil. Gory as hell, the root draws on Latin where spolium denoted the skin stripped from a slaughtered animal. Split and spill are cousins. Think bloodshed, and the spoils of war, a phrase we owe to Virgil, where conquerors tore treasures from their victims. Despoiling is the quainter label for the same brutality. The loot and booty. The pillage of the village.

As for brats, or Prince Harry (says one US judge), a child is spoilt (or spoiled) as their character has been deprived an essential quality. Avocados obey similar lines. Respect and/or ripeness has been forcibly removed. Just as a TV spoiler steals your ignorance of a plotline, while a Ford Falcon XR6 can deprive drag with its whale-tail spoiler.

American word-watcher Nancy Friedman reviewed the grisly history of spoil on her Fritinancy blog, the word spiking in political circles. Ever since Trump and Musk have combined, observers have relit (or relighted?) an expression once popular in President Andrew Jackson’s era: “the spoils system”.

Cronyism, in a nutshell, where officials of the right stripe get the spoils of a dismantled civil service. Rebates for mates. To the victor the spoils, in other words, the prime rib and leather yanked from the state’s golden calf. And if that last image spoiled (or spoilt) your appetite, then feel free to call me a spoilsport.

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