Participles
Definition: The word ‘participle’ comes to us via French, via
Latin, from Greek, and means ‘part-taking’. In grammar a par-
ticiple is a part taken from a complete, or finite, verb form for
another purpose.
Before studying participles, students should understand:
• the meaning of tense, which shows the time that an action takes
place, in the past, present or future
• the meaning and use of auxiliary verbs to complete tenses
• the meaning of the terms ‘finite’ and ‘non-finite’
Knowledge of participles is extremely important as they help
to form many of our tenses. While the present participle is easy to
recognise, the past participle can be tricky, as it is often confused
with the past tense. It can, therefore, be helpful to use charts to
distinguish those forms that cause most errors, both in speech and
in writing. Common errors occur with such verbs as ring – past
tense rang, past participle rung. So mistakes need to be corrected
at the earliest stage, before wrong habits set in. Participles occur in
our earliest conversation.
Participles are very flexible as they can become various parts
of speech according to the work they do. They can also be added
to an auxiliary (helper) verb in order to form a complete tense.
Participles are of two kinds.
Present participles
The present participle is formed by adding -ing to the base verb
form.
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For example:
eat + ing = eating
Using auxiliary verbs, we form finite continuous tenses:

They may be the same as the present tense also as in cut, put etc.
Remember, too, that some are spelt with ‘ed’ though the ending
sounds like ‘t’, for example: picked, bewitched, boxed
Different from the past tense
These are the participles that are different from the past tense,
usually because the inside vowel changes. They are called irregular
(or strong).
For example:
Present tense Past tense Past participle
break broke broken
The tip for telling the difference between the past tense and the
past participle is to put ‘I have’ in front of it. If it sounds correct,
then that is the past participle.
For example, which sounds correct:
I have broke.
or I have broken.
Adjectival participles and gerunds
Participles are one of the most flexible and useful word categories
in our language. When not being used to form finite verbs, they
can serve as adjectives or nouns. This expands our descriptive
ability and enables us to vary sentence patterns – a skill referred
to by Dr Moore as lacking in the work of many PhD students at
the QIMR.
Grammar and spelling are improved with skilled use of parti-
ciples, though students are often quite unaware that words they
are using are participles, formed from verbs. Choose plain terms
for each category and use them consistently so as not to confuse.
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G r A M M A r f o r e V e rY o n e
Before studying participles as adjectives and nouns, students

We distributed food to the disadvantaged.
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pA r t i c i p l e s
A
17.1 Activities: participles
1. Students choose colourful or humorous adjectival participles to
qualify given nouns. Check that they really are participles, as in
coiled snake, not slippery snake.
a. clouds e. ice-cream i. house
b. clarinet f. pencil j. bus
c. cow g. road
d. boots h. garbage
2. Students are given two minutes to write down as many adjectival
participles they can think of for:
a. a shop b. a jaguar c. a parachute
3. Students form adjectival participles from given verbs, present, past
or both, and apply each one to a suitable noun, for example:
break – breaking weather, broken cup
a. spill e. ring i. rise
b. drink f. write j. oil
c. dig g. lay
d. swell h. grind
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G r A M M A r f o r e V e rY o n e
broken jug