burnt

UK/bɜːnt/US/bɝnt/

adjectiveA22 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,529 of 15,258neutral

Burnt means cooked too long, until black and bitter. Burnt toast, burnt on the bottom, a burnt smell.

Burnt and burned are both correct past forms of burn; British English prefers burnt as an adjective — burnt toast — and either as a verb. American English prefers burned throughout. Burnt out means exhausted or destroyed by fire, and burnout is the state of exhaustion from overwork. Note burnt offering, both the religious term and the joke about a bad dinner, and burnt sienna and burnt umber, which are paint colours.

Definitions of burnt

1adjectiveburntCooked too long, until black and bitter.A2
“The bottom of the cake was burnt and the middle was raw.”
- Said"The rice is burnt, I'm afraid. We'll have bread with it."
- WrittenA burnt smell hung in the stairwell for a day and nobody would admit to it.
- UsedScrape the burnt bits off the pan before you soak it.
- ContrastBurnt, not brown. Brown is done and tastes of caramel; burnt is black and tastes of ash. brown →
- Not thisDark toast is not burnt toast. Burnt begins where the bitterness does, not where the colour does.
Patternburnt + noun (toast, pan, taste) · badly burnt · a burnt smell · burn / burnt / burning
2adjectivedestroyedDestroyed or damaged by fire.B1
“The burnt shell of the barn is still standing.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

burnt is a state after fire.

Remember it

BURNt → it BURNed

It is burn with a t: the toast was burnt, black on both sides, and the whole kitchen smells of it.

hooks ontoburn

Where it comes from

Old English brinnan and baernan both existed, one meaning to be on fire and the other to set alight. Middle English merged them into burn, and the two past forms burnt and burned are a small surviving trace of the two original verbs.

Middle English
brent
English, today
burnt

Middle English brent, brynt; by surface analysis, burn + t.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

burnt in the wild

When heated, it becomes a reddish brown, and it is called burnt sienna.
Sienna
However, the plant burnt down and has not been rebuilt.
Port Wakefield, Alaska
Junay or junai is a Filipino packed rice dish wrapped in banana leaves, made with burnt coconut meat and various spices.
Junay (food)
The spices and burnt coconut are also sold pre-mixed and are known as pipis itum.
Junay (food)
Of the total of 2,700 km2, 1,500 km2 were burnt forests in Southern Greece alone which meant that 4% of Greece's total forest area burnt in 2007 alone.
2007 Greek forest fires

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Definitions of burnt

1adjectiveburntCooked too long, until black and bitter.A2

“The bottom of the cake was burnt and the middle was raw.”

Said"The rice is burnt, I'm afraid. We'll have bread with it."
WrittenA burnt smell hung in the stairwell for a day and nobody would admit to it.
UsedScrape the burnt bits off the pan before you soak it.
ContrastBurnt, not brown. Brown is done and tastes of caramel; burnt is black and tastes of ash. brown →
Not thisDark toast is not burnt toast. Burnt begins where the bitterness does, not where the colour does.

Patternburnt + noun (toast, pan, taste) · badly burnt · a burnt smell · burn / burnt / burning

2adjectivedestroyedDestroyed or damaged by fire.B1

“The burnt shell of the barn is still standing.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

burnt is a state after fire.