-ingsuffix¹

Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element.

Forming verbal derivatives, originally abstract nouns of action, but subsequently developed in various directions: Old English -ung, -ing = Old Frisian -unge, -enge, -inge, Old Saxon -unga (Middle Low German and Middle Dutch -inge, Dutch -ing), Old High German -unga, -ung (Middle High German -unge, German -ung), Old Norse -ung and -ing; not known in Gothic:—Germanic type *-uŋgā (and ? *-iŋgā) str. feminine; not identified outside Teutonic. In Old English 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 Middle English, -ung rapidly died out, being scarcely found after 1250, and -ing (in early Middle English -inge) became the regular form. In later Middle English, -yng was a frequent scribal variant.

1. The original function of the suffix was to form nouns of action; as ácsung asking n., from ácsian to ask, bíding, bodung preaching, boding n., céapung, -ing cheaping n., cíding, -ung chiding n., créopung creeping n., ębbung ebbing n., féding feeding n., gaderung gathering n. These substantives were originally abstract; but even in Old English they often came to express a completed action, a process, habit, or art, as blętsung, -ing blessing n., leornung learning n., tídung tiding n.¹, weddung betrothal, wedding n., and then admitted a plural; sometimes they became concrete, as in bedding, eardung dwelling, offrung offering n., rynning rennet, earning n.² During the Middle English period all these uses received greater development, and in the 14th cent. 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 1c, 1g, 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 nouns 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 plural, while the nouns 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 noun 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 nouns 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 noun 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 verbal noun in -ing often forms the second element in a compound. The first element may be a qualifying adverb which in the finite tenses of the verb formerly stood either before or after it, but in the verbal nouns and adjectives 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 noun, 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 verbal noun often stands in an attributive relation to another noun, 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 hyphenated, 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 verbal noun stands in a simple attributive relation to the following noun, it approaches in function to an adjective, and is liable to be confounded with the present participle (-ing suffix²) 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 verbal noun used attributively, or the present participle 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 attributive uses of the verbal noun.

2. The most notable development of the verbal noun 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 Old English and early Middle English.The first traces of it as yet pointed out (see R. Blume Ursprung u. Entwickelung des Gerundiums im Englischen, Bremen 1880) occur c1340 in the Ayenbite of Inwit and in the writings of Richard Rolle of Hampole, in the separation of the adverb in downcoming, downfalling, ingoing, etc., and the placing of it after the verbal noun, 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 verbal noun could, like the verb to which it belonged, take an adverbial qualification. In other respects the verbal noun at first retained its noun construction, e.g.:

A generation later, the verbal noun is found with a verbal regimen, thus:1377 W. Langland Piers Plowman B. xiv. 186 Confessioun and knowlechyng and crauyng þy mercy Shulde amende vs.1377 W. Langland Piers Plowman B. 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 noun of action. Thus, Exodus. xix. 1 ‘the thridde moneth of the goyng of Yrael out [egressionis] of the loond of Egipte’; but Hebrews 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 Latin gerund was thus apparently an influential factor in the development of the English gerundial use of the verbal noun. Another influence may have been the literal rendering of the French gerund (identical in form with the present participle) after en, as in en venant, Latin in veniendo, in coming.

The full development of the gerundial use before 1400 led necessarily to an indefinite increase of verbal nouns in -ing, since every verb now had one as an actual or potential dependent. In conjunction with the formal identity of gerund and present participle (see -ing suffix²), 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 participles of the same tenses and voices. Thus Sir P. 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’; Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona 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 verbal noun 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 cent., 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 noun followed by of: thus Sir P. Sidney Arcadia i. iv. 15 b, ‘to fall to a sodain straitning them’; Sir P. Sidney Arcadia i. xii. 56 b, ‘by the well choosing of your commandements’.

The gerund still retains one feature of the verbal noun, 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 Shakespeare Macbeth i. iii. 42 ‘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 Vanity 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’, and Newcomes ‘But who ever heard of them eating an owl?’ C. 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 noun 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 preposition, as in μετὰ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ιωάννην, ‘after John being delivered up’. But in English there has probably been analogical influence from the construction of the present participle: cf., for instance, ‘John was digging potatoes’, ‘Who saw John digging potatoes?’, and ‘Who ever heard of John (= John's) digging potatoes?’

c1350 Hampole Prose Tr. (E.E.T.S.) 11 All manere of withdraweynge of oþer men thynges wrangwysely agaynes þaire wyll þat aghte it.

3. In a few Middle English writers, esp. in Wyclif, the form in -inge, -ynge, also appears for the Dative Infinitive, Old English -enne, Middle English -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 Old English -enne, confounded with -ende, had, like the present participle (see -ing suffix²), passed through -inde to -inge, -ynge.But it is possible that Wyclif, in using this form to render the Latin 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’.

This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online June 2020).

-ingsuffix²

Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element.

Suffix of the present participle, and of adjectives thence derived, or so formed; an alteration of the original Old English -ende = Old Frisian, Old Saxon -and, Old High German -ant-i (-ent-i, -ont-i, Middle High German -end-e, German -end), Old Norse -and-i (Swedish -ande, Danish -ende), Gothic -and-s, -and-a, = Latin -ent-, Greek -οντ-, Sanskrit -ant-.

Already, in later Old English, the participial -ende was often weakened to -inde, and this became the regular Southern form of the ending in Early Middle English From the end of the 12th cent. there was a growing tendency to confuse -inde, phonetically or scribally, with -inge; this confusion is specially noticeable in manuscripts written by Anglo-Norman scribes in the 13th cent. The final result was the predominance of the form -inge, and its general substitution for -inde in the 14th cent., although in some works, as the Kentish Ayenbite of 1340, the participle 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 noun 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’.

The termination -ing is that of the present participle, 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 -inge was the proper ending of the verbal noun (-ing suffix¹), it has naturally suggested itself to many that the levelling of the present participle 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 Middle English; 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 cent., become identical, may have been a factor in the development of the gerundial use of the verbal noun, 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 -ing suffix¹ 2). The identity of form of present participle 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’, originally ‘on building’, to ‘the ark was building’,—in which, if ‘building’ is taken as a participle, it must be explained as a participle passive = being built. To the same cause must be ascribed some of the current constructions of the gerund, and the tendency of the verbal noun when used attributively to run together with the present participle used adjectivally, as in cutting tools, a driving wheel (see -ing suffix¹).As with the verbal noun (-ing suffix¹), 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.

This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online June 2020).

单词	-ing
释义	-ingsuffix¹ Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element. Forming verbal derivatives, originally abstract nouns of action, but subsequently developed in various directions: Old English -ung, -ing = Old Frisian -unge, -enge, -inge, Old Saxon -unga (Middle Low German and Middle Dutch -inge, Dutch -ing), Old High German -unga, -ung (Middle High German -unge, German -ung), Old Norse -ung and -ing; not known in Gothic:—Germanic type *-uŋgā (and ? *-iŋgā) str. feminine; not identified outside Teutonic. In Old English 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 Middle English, -ung rapidly died out, being scarcely found after 1250, and -ing (in early Middle English -inge) became the regular form. In later Middle English, -yng was a frequent scribal variant. 1. The original function of the suffix was to form nouns of action; as ácsung asking n., from ácsian to ask, bíding, bodung preaching, boding n., céapung, -ing cheaping n., cíding, -ung chiding n., créopung creeping n., ębbung ebbing n., féding feeding n., gaderung gathering n. These substantives were originally abstract; but even in Old English they often came to express a completed action, a process, habit, or art, as blętsung, -ing blessing n., leornung learning n., tídung tiding n.¹, weddung betrothal, wedding n., and then admitted a plural; sometimes they became concrete, as in bedding, eardung dwelling, offrung offering n., rynning rennet, earning n.² During the Middle English period all these uses received greater development, and in the 14th cent. 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 1c, 1g, 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 nouns 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 plural, while the nouns 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 noun 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 nouns 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 noun 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 verbal noun in -ing often forms the second element in a compound. The first element may be a qualifying adverb which in the finite tenses of the verb formerly stood either before or after it, but in the verbal nouns and adjectives 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 noun, 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 verbal noun often stands in an attributive relation to another noun, 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 hyphenated, 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 verbal noun stands in a simple attributive relation to the following noun, it approaches in function to an adjective, and is liable to be confounded with the present participle (-ing suffix²) 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 verbal noun used attributively, or the present participle 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 attributive uses of the verbal noun. 2. The most notable development of the verbal noun 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 Old English and early Middle English.The first traces of it as yet pointed out (see R. Blume Ursprung u. Entwickelung des Gerundiums im Englischen, Bremen 1880) occur c1340 in the Ayenbite of Inwit and in the writings of Richard Rolle of Hampole, in the separation of the adverb in downcoming, downfalling, ingoing, etc., and the placing of it after the verbal noun, 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 verbal noun could, like the verb to which it belonged, take an adverbial qualification. In other respects the verbal noun at first retained its noun construction, e.g.: A generation later, the verbal noun is found with a verbal regimen, thus:1377 W. Langland Piers Plowman B. xiv. 186 Confessioun and knowlechyng and crauyng þy mercy Shulde amende vs.1377 W. Langland Piers Plowman B. 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 noun of action. Thus, Exodus. xix. 1 ‘the thridde moneth of the goyng of Yrael out [egressionis] of the loond of Egipte’; but Hebrews 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 Latin gerund was thus apparently an influential factor in the development of the English gerundial use of the verbal noun. Another influence may have been the literal rendering of the French gerund (identical in form with the present participle) after en, as in en venant, Latin in veniendo, in coming. The full development of the gerundial use before 1400 led necessarily to an indefinite increase of verbal nouns in -ing, since every verb now had one as an actual or potential dependent. In conjunction with the formal identity of gerund and present participle (see -ing suffix²), 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 participles of the same tenses and voices. Thus Sir P. 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’; Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona 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 verbal noun 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 cent., 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 noun followed by of: thus Sir P. Sidney Arcadia i. iv. 15 b, ‘to fall to a sodain straitning them’; Sir P. Sidney Arcadia i. xii. 56 b, ‘by the well choosing of your commandements’. The gerund still retains one feature of the verbal noun, 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 Shakespeare Macbeth i. iii. 42 ‘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 Vanity 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’, and Newcomes ‘But who ever heard of them eating an owl?’ C. 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 noun 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 preposition, as in μετὰ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ιωάννην, ‘after John being delivered up’. But in English there has probably been analogical influence from the construction of the present participle: cf., for instance, ‘John was digging potatoes’, ‘Who saw John digging potatoes?’, and ‘Who ever heard of John (= John's) digging potatoes?’ Π c1350 Hampole Prose Tr. (E.E.T.S.) 11 All manere of withdraweynge of oþer men thynges wrangwysely agaynes þaire wyll þat aghte it. 3. In a few Middle English writers, esp. in Wyclif, the form in -inge, -ynge, also appears for the Dative Infinitive, Old English -enne, Middle English -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 Old English -enne, confounded with -ende, had, like the present participle (see -ing suffix²), passed through -inde to -inge, -ynge.But it is possible that Wyclif, in using this form to render the Latin 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’. This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online June 2020). -ingsuffix² Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element. Suffix of the present participle, and of adjectives thence derived, or so formed; an alteration of the original Old English -ende = Old Frisian, Old Saxon -and, Old High German -ant-i (-ent-i, -ont-i, Middle High German -end-e, German -end), Old Norse -and-i (Swedish -ande, Danish -ende), Gothic -and-s, -and-a, = Latin -ent-, Greek -οντ-, Sanskrit -ant-. Already, in later Old English, the participial -ende was often weakened to -inde, and this became the regular Southern form of the ending in Early Middle English From the end of the 12th cent. there was a growing tendency to confuse -inde, phonetically or scribally, with -inge; this confusion is specially noticeable in manuscripts written by Anglo-Norman scribes in the 13th cent. The final result was the predominance of the form -inge, and its general substitution for -inde in the 14th cent., although in some works, as the Kentish Ayenbite of 1340, the participle 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 noun 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’. The termination -ing is that of the present participle, 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 -inge was the proper ending of the verbal noun (-ing suffix¹), it has naturally suggested itself to many that the levelling of the present participle 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 Middle English; 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 cent., become identical, may have been a factor in the development of the gerundial use of the verbal noun, 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 -ing suffix¹ 2). The identity of form of present participle 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’, originally ‘on building’, to ‘the ark was building’,—in which, if ‘building’ is taken as a participle, it must be explained as a participle passive = being built. To the same cause must be ascribed some of the current constructions of the gerund, and the tendency of the verbal noun when used attributively to run together with the present participle used adjectivally, as in cutting tools, a driving wheel (see -ing suffix¹).As with the verbal noun (-ing suffix¹), 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. This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online June 2020). -ingsuffix³ Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element. A suffix forming derivative masculine nouns, 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 languages. Old English examples are æþeling atheling n., cyning king n., lytling little one, child, flýming fugitive, hóring whoremonger; also the patronymics Æþelwulfing son of Æthelwulf, Ecgbrehting, Cerdicing, Wodening, etc. (Old English 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 n., scilling shilling n., and of fractional parts, as feorþing quarter, farthing n., teoðung, -ing tenth, tithing n.¹: so Old Norse þriðjung-r third part, thriding riding n.² (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 suffix¹ (-l + -ing suffix¹). This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900; most recently modified version published online December 2019). -ingsuffix⁴ Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element. Origin: Formed within English, by conversion. Etymon: -ing suffix¹. Etymology: Originating in use as adverb of an oblique case form of nouns in -ing suffix¹. (No longer productive in English.) Forming adverbs, from nouns in -ing suffix¹, from adjectives, or modifying or strengthening existing adverbs (see e.g. needing adv.). This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, November 2010; most recently modified version published online December 2019). < suffix¹suffix²suffix³suffix⁴
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