Participles

Sometimes verbs get confusing, so here’s a little trick to help you figure out participles:

What is a participle?

Participles, both past and present, are verb forms that can be used as an adjective or a noun.

Take a common verb like jump. It can be used as a noun as in:

• Jumping over the hedgerows is exhausting.

It can also be used as an adjective:

• The jumping bean held the children’s attention far longer than the teacher expected.

Examples of present participles

An easy way to distinguish is present participles always end in 'ing'.

• Adding
• Carrying
• Enjoying
• Boiling
• Barking

• Gasping

• Enjoying a good ice cream cone with my best friend is excellent therapy.

Examples of past participles

Most common verbs ending in 'ed' form the past participle, such as:

• Added
• Carried
• Enjoyed
• Boiled
• Barked

• Gasped

• The boiled potato was rather mushy and dank.

Examples of irregular past participles

Some past participles are a little trickier. Thanks to irregular verbs, you have words like:

• Brought (from the verb bring)
• Rung (from the verb ring)
• Risen (from the verb rise)
• Built (from the verb build)
• Broken (from the verb break)

• Swollen (from the verb swell)

• Jeff’s two swollen eyes and broken nose looked even more ghastly the next day.

• Brought by Claire, the hummus was an instant hit at the party.

So there isn’t a hard and fast rule that you can use to form past participles from irregular verbs. That’s why it’s so hard to teach young children to say “brought” instead of “brung.”