Spelling Perfectly - To a T

A recent discussion among colleagues has set me thinking. Someone had used the phrase "Well done, you have earnt a star!" when marking their students' work. I queried this, and was informed that earnt was an acceptable past participle, just like learnt. I'm not convinced about putting it in my pupils' books, and neither is the OED [it is technically correct, but not in current, common, usage] but that's irrelevant. What it did get me wondering is how many of our regularly used verbs still use the -t ending instead of -ed.
It is fascinating, and the list is surprisingly long. Consider the eep endings

sleep goes to slept
keep goes to kept
weep goes to wept
eave endings
leave/left, bereave/bereft, cleave/cleft 
and then there's the verb-to-noun heave/heft, weave/weft
and give/gift, thieve/theft

Nobody says they will rive things anymore, but riven [usually asunder] and rift are well known. 
lend/lent, bend/bent, send/sent, lose/lost
kneel/knelt, feel/felt...and burn/burnt
I'll ignore the crazy irregular stuff [catch/caught, bring/brought, buy/bought, think/thought]

I discovered that the word comb comes from the European kemb, brought over by the Flemish weavers, centuries ago. Kemb is still a dialect word in parts of Yorkshire. So combed becomes kempt. I have always been particularly fond of this word. 
It occurs in a poem by Ogden Nash. I learnt it by heart when I was a student. I didn't realise at the time that my true love would be half Belgian!



My dream

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

And if you want to know about "To a T" check here