Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A form of verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective, as the past participle baked in We had some baked beans, and is used with an auxiliary verb to indicate tense, aspect, or voice, as the past participle baked in the passive sentence The beans were baked too long.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Whatever partakes of the nature of two or more other things; something that is part one thing and part another; a mongrel.
- n. In gram., a verbal adjective that participates or shares in the construction of the verb to which it belongs, and so has in a certain manner and degree a place in the verbal system; a word having the value of an adjective as part of speech, but so regularly made from a verb, and associated with it in meaning and construction, as to seem to belong to the verb. Thus, ‘giving him a book,’ like ‘I give him a book’ ‘the book given him,’ or ‘lent him,’ or ‘handed him’ and so on. There are but two simple participles in English, usually called the present and the past or passive:as, loving, loved; singing, sung; in some languages there are more, as for example in Greek. The division-line between participle and ordinary adjective is indistinct, and the one often passes over into the other: thus, a charming girl, a learned man. Participles are much used in many languages, especially in English, in forming verb-phrases by combination with auxiliaries: thus, I am giving,I have given, it is given,etc.
Wiktionary
- n. grammar A form of verb that may function as an adjective or noun. English has two types of participles: the present participle and the past participle.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Gram.) A part of speech partaking of the nature of both verb and adjective; a form of verb, or verbal adjective, modifying a noun, but taking the adjuncts of the verb from which it is derived. In the sentences: a letter is written; being asleep he did not hear; exhausted by toil he will sleep soundly, -- written, being, and exhaustedare
participles . - n. obsolete Anything that partakes of the nature of different things.
WordNet 3.0
Etymologies
- From Old French participle (1388), ‘a noun-adjective’, variant of participe, from Latin participium. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, variant of participe, from Latin participium (translation of Greek metokhē, sharing, partaking, participle), from particeps, particip-, partaker; see participate. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In the sentence, The worm _crushed_ under my foot died, _crushed_, expressing the action as assumed, is, as you have already learned, a participle; and, as the action is completed, we call it a _past participle_.”
“The thing we call a participle, being a mixture of a verb and noun is nothing of itself, as are not the common names of male and female qualities (i. e, adjectives), but in construction it is put with others, in regard of tenses belonging to verbs, in regard of cases to nouns.”
“The past participle is here coincident in time with the preceding verb, ye were”
“But worse, it’s completely unclear who the dangling participle is supposed to refer to.”
“The verb form in all these cases is called a participle, and must be used in connection with either a nominative or objective case of a noun or pronoun.”
“A participle is a form of a verb partaking of the nature of an adjective or a noun and expressing action or _human_ being as flying and sleep.”
“-- _Hearing_ is a form of the verb called participle because the act expressed by it is merely assumed, and it shares the nature of an adjective and that of a verb.”
Higher Lessons in English A work on english grammar and composition
“This emphatic use of the participle is a more unmitigated Hebraism than the other forms of the etymological figure.”
“But we find sentences in the LXX in which a participle is the only verb.”
“A participle is a word that describes a noun or pronoun, by assigning to it a certain action or state.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘participle’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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Useful
parkour, diegetic, callipygian, dasypygal, hypnagogic, hypnopompic, antejentacular, postprandial, perspicuity, perspicacity, föhn, traceur and 115 more...
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Why We Curse: WTF?
This list collects the magnificent collection of vocabulary of the article "What the F***? Why We Curse," by Steven Pinker, in The New Republic (Oct. 2007). I think I'm more impressed with the coll...
curse, language, earthy, ancient, unthinkable, thinkable, emotional, rhyme, meter, alliteration, pleasure, metaphor and 196 more...
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hedges's Words
wii, crepuscule, adumbrate, concatenation, sufi, qawwali, furry, riot, mellifluous, conspiracy, etymology, tea cozy and 369 more...
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Words I will probably never use
décolleté, pendragon, amerce, viviparous, dragoon, brigand, outlaw, outlawry, lugubrious, boor, contretemps, decrepit and 167 more...
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Aequoria's list
affect, deleterious, nuance, pliant, verbatim, pertinent, latter, municipality, provincial, voyeuristic, circumlocution, wane and 798 more...
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ginnylev's Words
neuroplasticity, repudiate, scintilla, ruminate, tautology, ombudsman, exigent, filibuster, grace, ambidextrous, amends, disclosure and 623 more...
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What's next here?
thunderhead, thundercloud, cumulus, cumulonimbus, fibrous, hazy, glaciated, cirrus, nimbus, meteorology, fahrenheit, thermoscope and 285 more...
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Words about words
Most of these describe word patterns or relationships between words.
panvocalic, palindrome, anagram, transposition, antigram, reversal, isogram, alternade, trinade, beheadment, decapitation, apheresis and 149 more...
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davextreme's Words
dale, prognosis, evince, verboten, deservedly, deserving, obsolescence, frotteurism, chuffed, clepsydra, wehrmacht, participle and 13 more...
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things grammatical and punctual
apostrophe, umlaut, interrobang, ampersand, pilcrow, tilde, ellipsis, asterisk, diaeresis, circumflex, guillemet, parenthesis and 8 more...
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Academic Writing 3
For students of sentence structure
substantive, verb, verbal, pronoun, noun, perfect, participle, preposition, modifier, adjective, adverb, connector and 18 more...
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shakyknees's list
annoyances and obsessions.
yogurt, defenestrate, taciturnity, batman, rapscallion, pulchritudinous, participle, tremulous, beatific, meretricious, hackneyed, timshel and 10 more...
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supah's list
world of supah
flavorite, participle, 'nsuch, slacks, blouse, sphagnum, squeegie, party store, baci
Tweets
Looking for tweets for participle.
heypacksees verb as adjective (cf. gerund, attributive) Jan 23, 2011
uselessness Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. Jan 25, 2007