| 释义 |
▪ I. -ing1
suffix forming verbal derivatives, originally abstract nouns of action, but subsequently developed in various directions: OE. -ung, -ing = OFris. -unge, -enge, -inge, OS. -unga (MLG. and MDu. -inge, Du. -ing), OHG. -unga, -ung (MHG. -unge, Ger. -ung), ON. -ung and -ing; not known in Gothic:—OTeut. type *-uŋgā (and ? *-iŋgā) str. fem.; not identified outside Teutonic. In OE. the more usual form was -ung (inflected -unge), but -ing also was frequent, esp. in derivatives from original ja- verbs (see Cosijn, Altwests. Gramm. ii. 21, 22). In early ME., -ung rapidly died out, being scarcely found after 1250, and -ing (in early ME. -inge) became the regular form. In later ME., -yng was a frequent scribal variant.
1. The original function of the suffix was to form nouns of action; as ácsung asking, from ácsian to ask, bíding, bodung preaching, boding, céapung, -ing cheaping, cíding, -ung chiding, créopung creeping, ębbung ebbing, féding feeding, gaderung gathering. These substantives were originally abstract; but even in OE. they often came to express a completed action, a process, habit, or art, as blętsung, -ing blessing, leornung learning, tídung tidings, weddung betrothal, wedding, and then admitted a plural; sometimes they became concrete, as in bedding, eardung dwelling, offrung offering, rynning rennet, earning3. During the ME. period all these uses received greater development, and in the 14th c. the formation became established, esp. in the gerundial use (see 2 below), as an actual or possible derivative of every verb. By later extension, formations of the same kind have been analogically made from substantives (see c, g, below), and, by ellipsis, from adverbs, as innings, offing, outing, homing (homecoming); while nonce-words in -ing are formed freely on words or phrases of many kinds, e.g. oh-ing, hear-hearing, hoo-hooing, pshawing, yo-hoing (calling oh!, hear! hear!, etc.), how-d'ye-doing (saying ‘how do you do?’); ‘I do not believe in all this pinting’ (having pints of beer).
In current use, verbal substantives in -ing may be grouped, as to their sense, under the following heads:
a. Nouns of continuous action or existence, as crying, falling, flying, kicking, living, pushing, running, sleeping, speaking, striking, etc. They are distinguished from verbal ns. of the same form as the verb-stem, as a cry, a fall, a kick, a push, a run, a shout, a sleep, etc., in that the latter denote acts of momentary or short duration, having a definite beginning and end, and grammatically take a and pl., while the ns. in -ing imply indefinite duration without reference to beginning or end, and take no plural. Cf. ‘a loud cry’, ‘many repeated cries’, with ‘loud and continued crying’. A push is done at once, but may be repeated as many pushes; pushing is continuous, there may be ‘much’, but not ‘many’ of it.
b. The notion of action may be limited to that of a single or particular occasion, as a christening, a wedding, a meeting, a sitting, a merry-making, an outing. As thus used, the n. takes a plural: ‘three long sittings’.
c. The notion of simple action passes insensibly into that of a process, practice, habit, or art, which may or may not be regarded as in actual exercise; e.g. ‘reading and writing are now common acquirements’; so drawing, engraving, fencing, smoking, swimming. Words of this kind are also formed directly from ns. which are the names of things used, or persons engaged, in the action: such are ballooning, blackberrying, canalling, chambering, cocking (cock-fighting), fowling, gardening, hopping (hop-picking), hurting (gathering hurts), nooning, nutting, sniping, buccaneering, costering, soldiering, and the like.
d. Hence often transferred to the concrete or material accompaniment or product of the action or process, as ‘the paper was covered with writing’; so binding, blacking, dripping, dubbing, lightning, sewing, stitching, etc.
e. Hence as the designation of a material thing in which the action or its result is concreted or embodied; as ‘a writing was affixed to the wall’; so a covering, holding, landing, shaving, winding (of a river), etc. A peculiar instance is a being, one wherein the attribute of being or existence is exemplified, now usually a living being.
f. Often used as the collective designation of the substance or material employed in an action or process, as clothing, that with which one is clothed; so bedding, carpeting, ceiling, edging, flooring, gearing, gilding, housing, lining, rigging, roofing, shipping, tackling, tiling, trimming, etc.
g. In the preceding group, there is often a n. of the same form as the verb, with which the noun in -ing comes to be closely associated, as in bed, bedding; clothes, clothing; floor, flooring; rail, railing; ship, shipping, etc. Hence arise formations in -ing from substantives without a corresponding verb; esp. in industrial and commercial language, with the sense of a collection or indefinite mass of the thing or of its material; as ashlaring, coping, cornicing, costering, girdering, piping, scaffolding, tubing; bagging, quilting, sacking, sheeting, shirting, ticking, trousering.
h. In some words the concrete sense appears exclusively, or preferentially, in the plural -ings: e.g. earnings, leavings, sweepings, tidings; hangings, innings, moorings, trappings.
Other exceptional or irregular uses of -ing are discussed under the individual words.
The vbl. n. in -ing often forms the second element in a compound. The first element may be a qualifying adv. which in the finite tenses of the vb. formerly stood either before or after it, but in the vbl. ns. and adjs. regularly preceded, and thus came to be united with these: thus, from out go or go out came out going, now out-going or outgoing. So down-sitting, in-being, in-dwelling, off-scouring, up-rising, well-being. The first element may also be a n., the direct, indirect, or adverbial object of the verb, as book-keeping, child-bearing, glass-blowing, house-keeping, sheep-shearing, sea-faring, hand-writing, type-writing, or merely = a subjective genitive, as cock-crowing, sun-rising.
The vbl. n. often stands in an attributive relation to another n., as in the building trade = the trade of building, drawing materials = materials for drawing, singing lessons = lessons in singing; when such expressions form established designations, they are regularly hyphened, and pronounced with the stress on the first element, as in breeding-place, carving-knife, dancing-master, dwelling-house, fowling-piece, laughing-stock, meeting-house, reaping-hook, stumbling-block, spinning-wheel, thanksgiving-day, turning-lathe, walking-stick, etc. But, when the collocation is only occasional, and the vbl. n. stands in a simple attributive relation to the following n., it approaches in function to an adjective, and is liable to be confounded with the pres. pple. (-ing2) used adjectivally. The sense generally determines the nature of the collocation; thus, drawing lessons are not lessons that draw, but lessons in drawing; a fainting fit, not a fit that faints, but a fit of fainting; a drinking cup, not a cup that drinks, but a cup for drinking with. A walking-leaf is a leaf (so-called) that walks; a walking-stick is a stick for walking. But in some cases in which the second element denotes a machine, agency, or agent, it is difficult to say whether the word in -ing is the vbl. n. used attributively, or the present pple. used adjectivally, e.g. a cutting tool, a bursting charge, an advertising agency. In accordance with general analogy, such combinations are, as a rule, treated in this dictionary as attrib. uses of the vbl. n.
2. The most notable development of the vbl. n. in -ing is its use as a gerund, i.e. a substantive with certain verbal functions, particularly those of being qualified by an adverb instead of an adjective, and of governing an object like a verb: e.g. the habit of speaking loosely (= loose speaking); he has hopes of coming back speedily (= a speedy return); he practises writing (= the writing of) leading articles; engaged in building himself a house (= the building of a house for himself); after having written a letter (= the completion of the writing of a letter).
This gerundial use is peculiar to English, of which it is a characteristic and most important feature; it was unknown to OE. and early ME.
The first traces of it as yet pointed out (see R. Blume Ursprung und Entwickelung des Gerundiums im Englischen, Bremen 1880) occur c 1340 in the Ayenbite of Inwit and in the writings of Richard Rolle of Hampole, in the separation of the adv. in downcoming, downfalling, ingoing, etc., and the placing of it after the vbl. n., coming down, falling down, going in, as in the finite verb, come down, fall down, go in. This was soon extended to adverbs and adverbial phrases generally, so that it became established that any vbl. n. could, like the vb. to which it belonged, take an adverbial qualification. In other respects the vbl. n. at first retained its n. construction, e.g. c1350Hampole Prose Tr. (E.E.T.S.) 11 ‘all manere of withdraweynge of oþer men thynges wrangwysely agaynes þaire wyll þat aghte it’.
A generation later, the vbl. n. is found with a verbal regimen, thus1377Langland P. Pl. B. xiv. 186 ‘Confessioun and knowlechyng and crauyng þy mercy Shulde amende vs’; Ibid. xix. 72 ‘with-outen mercy askynge’. This gerundial construction is very frequent in Wyclif's Bible (1382); and it is significant that he regularly uses it in translating the Latin gerund, while he retains the original substantival construction in rendering a Latin n. of action. Thus, Exod. xix. 1 ‘the thridde moneth of the goyng of Yrael out [egressionis] of the loond of Egipte’; but Heb. xii. 10 ‘in receyuynge [recipiendo] the halowing of him’; Mark iii. 15 ‘power of heelynge [curandi] siknessis, and of castynge out [ejiciendi] fendis’. Imitation of the L. gerund was thus app. an influential factor in the development of the Eng. gerundial use of the vbl. n. Another influence may have been the literal rendering of the Fr. gerund (identical in form with the pr. pple.) after en, as in en venant, L. in veniendo, in coming.
The full development of the gerundial use before 1400 led necessarily to an indefinite increase of vbl. ns. in -ing, since every verb now had one as an actual or potential dependent. In conjunction with the formal identity of gerund and pres. pple. (see -ing2), it led also, at a later date, to the introduction of gerundial expressions for the perfect and future tenses, and for the passive voice, coinciding in form with the pples. of the same tenses and voices. Thus Sidney Arcadia i. (1725) 68 ‘want of consideration in not having demanded thus much’; Spenser F.Q. iii. iv. 50 ‘feare of being fowly shent’; Hooker Eccl. Pol. i. xi. §2 ‘by being unto God united’; Shakes. Two Gent. i. iii. 16 ‘in hauing knowne no trauaile in his youth’; Tempest iii. i. 19 ‘'T will weepe for hauing wearied you’; Mod. ‘The news of his being about to return home, instead of having been slain by the enemy’.
But, although the gerundial use was fully established by 1400, it was a long time before it was distinctly separated from the earlier substantival use. The vbl. n. has the (or equivalent) before it, and of (or equivalent) after it; the gerund has neither. A good example of the two constructions side by side, and with identical sense, occurs in Bacon's third Essay: ‘Concerning the Meanes of procuring Unity: Men must beware, that in the procuring..of Religious Unity, they doe not’, etc. But, down to the 17th c., mixed constructions were frequent, in which the word in -ing had an adjectival qualification with a verbal regimen, or, conversely, an adverbial qualification with the construction of a n. followed by of: thus Sidney Arcadia i. iv. 15 b, ‘to fall to a sodain straitning them’; Ibid. i. xii. 56 b, ‘by the well choosing of your commandements’.
The gerund still retains one feature of the vbl. n., viz. that of admitting of a preceding possessive case or possessive pronoun, as in ‘after John's behaving so strangely’, ‘upon my readily granting it’. In the literary language this construction is regularly retained with a pronoun, and very generally with a single personal substantive; but, with names of things, and phraseological or involved denominations, the sign of the possessive began to be dropped already by 1600; thus Shakes. Macbeth i. iii. 44 ‘By each at once her choppie finger laying Vpon her skinnie lips’. No other treatment is now possible in such constructions as ‘in default of one or other being accepted’, ‘on the general and his staff appearing’, ‘in the event of your expectations not being at once realized’, ‘in consequence of much snow having fallen’; and, in current spoken English, the 's is commonly omitted with all nouns: thus Thackeray Van. Fair xi. ⁋48 ‘I insist upon Miss Sharp appearing’, where ‘Miss Sharp's’ would now sound pedantic or archaic. Even a pronoun standing before the gerund is put in the objective, in dialect speech; and, when the pronoun is emphatic, this is common in ordinary colloquial English; thus Thackeray Esmond I. 242 ‘Papa did not care about them learning’; ― Newcomes ‘But who ever heard of them eating an owl?’ Chas. Reade Hard Cash (1863) II. 332 ‘That is no excuse for him beating you.’ So ‘What is the use of me speaking?’
In such constructions the objective n. or pronoun seems to stand in simple apposition to the gerund, the two forming a kind of combined object of the preposition, reminding us of the Greek infinitive with an accusative after a prep., as in µετὰ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ιωάννην, ‘after John being delivered up’. But in Eng. there has probably been analogical influence from the construction of the pres. pple.: cf., for instance, ‘John was digging potatoes’, ‘Who saw John digging potatoes?’, and ‘Who ever heard of John (= John's) digging potatoes?’
3. In a few ME. writers, esp. in Wyclif, the form in -inge, -ynge, also appears for the Dative Infinitive, OE. -enne, ME. -ene, -en. Thus Luke xxii. 23 ‘who it was of hem that was to doynge [facturus] this thing.’ John vi. 72 ‘this was to bitraiynge [traditurus] him.’ In its origin this is a case of phonetic confusion; the OE. -enne, confounded with -ende, had, like the pres. pple. (see -ing2), passed through -inde to -inge, -ynge.
But it is possible that Wyclif, in using this form to render the L. future participle, actually identified it in sense with the gerund, understanding the first quotation above as if = ‘who it was of them that was [destined] to the doing of this thing’, which he contracted to the gerundial construction ‘to doynge this thing’.
▪ II. -ing2
suffix of the present participle, and of adjs. thence derived, or so formed; an alteration of the original OE. -ende = OFris., OS. -and, OHG. -ant-i (-ent-i, -ont-i, MHG. -end-e, Ger. -end), ON. -and-i (Sw. -ande, Da. -ende), Goth. -and-s, -and-a, = L. -ent-, Gr. -οντ-, Skr. -ant-.
Already, in later OE., the ppl. -ende was often weakened to -inde, and this became the regular Southern form of the ending in Early ME. From the end of the 12th c. there was a growing tendency to confuse -inde, phonetically or scribally, with -inge; this confusion is specially noticeable in MSS. written by Anglo-Norman scribes in the 13th c. The final result was the predominance of the form -inge, and its general substitution for -inde in the 14th c., although in some works, as the Kentish Ayenbite of 1340, the pple. still regularly has -inde. In Midland English -ende is frequent in Gower, and occasional in Midland writers for some time later; but the southern -inge, -ynge, -ing, favoured by Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, soon spread over the Midland area, and became the Standard English form. The Northern dialect, on the other hand, in England and Scotland, retained the earlier ending in the form -ande, -and, strongly contrasted with the verbal n. in -yng, -ing (-yne, -ene). At the present day the two are completely distinct in Northumberland and the Southern Counties of Scotland, although the general mutescence of final d, and the change of |-ɪŋ| to |-ɪn|, make the difference in most cases only a vowel one: e.g. ‘a singan' burd’, ‘the singin |-ɪn| o' the burds’, but ‘a gaan bairn’ (a going child), ‘afore gangin' hame’.
As -inge was the proper ending of the vbl. n. (-ing1), it has naturally suggested itself to many that the levelling of the pres. pple. under the same form must have been the result of some contact or confusion of the functions or constructions of the two formations. But investigation has discovered no trace of any such functional or constructional contact in Early ME.; and it is now generally agreed that the confusion was, in its origin, entirely phonetic. On the other hand, the fact that the forms had, by the 14th c., become identical, may have been a factor in the development of the gerundial use of the vbl. n., which began then; and it has certainly influenced the subsequent development of the compound gerundial forms being made, having made, having been made, being about to go, etc., which have the same form as the corresponding participles (see -ing1 2). The identity of form of pr. pple. and gerund probably also assisted the process whereby, at a later date, such a construction as ‘the king went a-hunting’, formerly ‘on or an huntinge’, was shortened to ‘the king went hunting’, the last word being then taken as the participle; and thus to the shortening of ‘the ark was a-building’, orig. ‘on building’, to ‘the ark was building’,—in which, if ‘building’ is taken as a pple., it must be explained as a pple. pass. = being built. To the same cause must be ascribed some of the current constructions of the gerund, and the tendency of the vbl. n. when used attributively to run together with the pr. pple. used adjectivally, as in cutting tools, a driving wheel (see -ing1).
The termination -ing is that of the pres. pple., whether used as part of the verb, or adjectivally; also of adjectives of participial origin or nature, as cunning, willing, daring, buccaneering, freebooting, non-juring, hulking, lumping, strapping, swingeing, and of prepositions or adverbs of participial origin, as concerning, during, excepting, notwithstanding, pending, touching.
As with the vbl. n. (-ing1), words of participial form and use may be formed on other parts of speech, or on phrases, e.g. buccaneering adventurers, sailors yo-hoing lustily, how-d'ye-doing acquaintances.
▪ III. -ing3
a suffix forming derivative masculine ns., with the sense of ‘one belonging to’ or ‘of the kind of’, hence ‘one possessed of the quality of’, and also as a patronymic = ‘one descended from, a son of’, and as a diminutive. Found in the same form, or as -ung, in the other Teutonic langs. OE. examples are æþeling atheling, cyning king, lytling little one, child, flýming fugitive, hóring whoremonger; also the patronymics æþelwulfing son of æthelwulf, Ecgbrehting, Cerdicing, Wodening, etc. (OE. Chron. anno 855), Adaming, etc. (Lindisf. Gosp. Luke iii. 38), and the gentile names Hoccingas, Iclingas, Centingas (men of Kent), with the Scriptural Gomorringas, Moabitingas, Idumingas, etc. This suffix also formed names of coins, as pending, penning penny, scilling shilling, and of fractional parts, as feorþing quarter, farthing, teoðung, -ing tenth, tithing: so ON. þriðjung-r third part, thriding riding (of Yorkshire).
Among words of various ages with this suffix are bretheling, bunting, gelding, golding, herring, hilding, sweeting, whiting, wilding. See also the compound suffix -ling (-l + -ing). |