What Are Gerunds?

Gerunds are words that looks like verbs but acts like nouns.

You can spot them because they will always be a verb + ing acting as a noun.

(Words that are made of verbs but don't act like verbs are called verbals. There are two other types of verbals: participles and infinitives.)

Example:

The word swim is a verb. Swimming is a verb with an -ing ending acting as a noun (the subject of this sentence).

Example:

Their Modifiers and Complements

Remember what these act as? NOUNS, right?

Let's look at that example of the phrase from above.

Example:

Now, you may have noticed that in the pool is an adverbial prepositional phrase. It is telling us where the swimming happened.

But, nouns can only be modified with adjectives, right?

Well, remember how we talked about a gerund being a verb form acting as a noun? Even though it's an official noun, it still carries some of the attributes of a verb.

The verb part allows it to take adverbial modifiers just like any other verb- even though it's acting as a noun. (By the way, it can still take adjectival modifiers - just like other nouns.)

They can even take complements (like direct objects), just like verbs can.

And, this one is kind of strange, they can sort of take subjects. Only the subjects will never be in the subject case (he, she, I). They will always be possessive (his, her, my).

Basic Diagramming

These look like little steps when you diagram them. The verb part goes on the top part of the step, and on the -ing goes on the bottom part of the step.

Finished Gerunds? Go Back to Phrases.

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