# Gerund
A gerund is a non-finite verb form, in English one ending in -ing, that functions as a noun while retaining verbal properties such as the ability to take a direct object and an adverbial modifier. In *Fishing is fun*, the word *fishing* acts as the subject of the sentence the way a noun would, yet it can still govern an object, as in *Fishing trout is fun*.[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php) • [2](https://www.eltconcourse.com/training/initial/grammar_essentials/gerund_infinitive.html)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Definition | A verb form in -ing used as a noun; gerunds are sometimes called "verbal nouns"[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php) |
| Verbal properties | Takes direct objects (*I enjoy reading detective novels*) and adverb modifiers (*strolling aimlessly*)[2](https://www.eltconcourse.com/training/initial/grammar_essentials/gerund_infinitive.html) |
| Nominal properties | Can be subject, object, or complement (*Smoking costs a lot of money*); modified by adjectives and determiners in its nominal type[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php) • [3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808) |
| Two subtypes | Nominal gerunds have noun-phrase-internal syntax; verbal gerunds have clause-like internal structure and developed from them in Middle and Modern English[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808) |
| Aspectual finding | -ing in gerunds does not mark ongoingness; gerunds can denote non-durative (achievements, semelfactives) and telic (accomplishments) situations[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808) |
| Complementation | Verbs such as *appreciate, consider, enjoy, give up, keep, put off, suggest* are normally followed by a gerund; *ask, decide, expect, intend, need, refuse, seem, tend* take an infinitive[4](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810090/40846/excerpt/9781009040846_excerpt.pdf) |
| Modern terminology | The Collins Cobuild English Grammar (1995) prefers the term "-ing noun", while the tradition behind *The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language* groups gerund and present participle as a single "gerund-participle" form[5](https://dispace.edu.nstu.ru/didesk/file/get/283276) • [6](https://truthbrary.mpaq.org/BOOKS/Languages%20-%20Dictionaries%20%28Books%29/Languages/The_Cambridge_Dictionary_of_English_Grammar_-_Pam_Peters.pdf) |
## Gerund and present participle
Because English marks both the gerund and the present participle with -ing, the two are easily confused, and traditional grammar separates them by function. When the -ing form behaves more like a verb or an adjective, as in *Anthony is fishing* or *I have a boring teacher*, it is a present participle; when it behaves more like a noun, as in *Fishing is fun*, it is a gerund.[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php) The same word can serve either role in near-identical frames: in *My favourite occupation is reading*, *reading* is a gerund acting as a complement, while in *My favourite niece is reading*, it is a participle acting as the main verb after the auxiliary.[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php)
Gerunds also differ from fully nominalized verbal nouns such as *painting* in *the painting of the village*: a verbal noun is a noun derived from a verb, so it cannot take a direct object, is modified by adjectives rather than adverbs, and can be pluralized (*paintings*), none of which applies to a gerund.[2](https://www.eltconcourse.com/training/initial/grammar_essentials/gerund_infinitive.html) Like nouns, gerunds can be the subject, object, or complement of a sentence, and when a gerund takes its own object, the whole expression can fill any of those roles, as in *Smoking cigarettes costs a lot of money*.[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php)
## Nominal and verbal gerunds
Linguistic research divides present-day English gerunds into two subtypes. Nominal gerunds (NGs) behave externally like noun phrases and internally like noun phrases: they realize their dependents periphrastically with *of* (*the signing of the agreement*), take adjectival modifiers, determiners, quantifiers, and negation by *no*, and do not permit secondary tense or passive marking.[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808) Verbal gerunds (VGs) have clause-like internal structure, allowing objects and adverbs much as a finite clause does.[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808) Diachronically, the verbal type developed from the nominal type during the Middle and, especially, the [Modern English](https://www.edgepedia.org/modern-english) period.[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808)
**Discourse behavior differs as well.** Nouns serve as discourse participants and tend to be tracked anaphorically as wholes, while clauses are accessed through their internal participants; nominal gerunds increasingly resemble prototypical nominals in this respect, while verbal gerunds retain clause-like internal accessibility.[7](https://academic.oup.com/book/35315/chapter-abstract/299963967) This ties the two subtypes to different positions on the "nouniness squish", the gradient scale of nominal character described by Ross (1973).[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808)
## Aspectual behavior
Gerunds are often described as naming ongoing or unbounded activities, but a quantitative, corpus-based comparative analysis by Liesbet Heyvaert, Charlotte Maekelberghe, and Anouk Buyle found that this claim cannot be upheld in general.[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808) A significant number of both nominal and verbal gerunds denote non-durative situations, such as achievements and semelfactives, or telic ones, such as accomplishments, and most gerunds lack explicit markers of completeness or ongoingness; the -ing ending itself does not function as a marker of ongoingness or unboundedness.[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808)
The subtypes differ systematically. Nominal gerunds denote activities significantly more often and are more likely to appear in contexts explicitly marked for temporal bounding or ongoingness; verbal gerunds represent achievements or semelfactives significantly more often and occur more often in neutral, unmarked contexts with respect to temporal bounding.[3](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808)
## History
The English gerund has a layered origin. [Old English](https://www.edgepedia.org/old-english) had only verbal nouns with purely nominal syntactic function; under the influence of Latin syntax, exercised in the Anglo-Saxon glosses and Biblical translations of the Vulgate, verbal nouns acquired the grammatical status of gerunds in late Old English or early [Middle English](https://www.edgepedia.org/middle-english).[8](https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1571135652274182272?lang=en) The gerundial ending -ing then absorbed the participial ending -ind (or -end) because of their phonetic similarity, and phonetic similarity likewise caused inflectional infinitives ending in -inne (-enne) to take the gerundial ending -ing.[8](https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1571135652274182272?lang=en) The genitive case first appeared as the grammatical subject of the gerund, and the passive and perfect gerund forms emerged later in the development.[8](https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1571135652274182272?lang=en) The gerund is fully developed as a verbal noun in Modern English.[9](https://egarp.lt/index.php/aghel/article/download/207/207)
The term itself is Latin in origin: the Latin gerund is the neuter of the gerundive, used substantively in the genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative cases, expressing an action of the verb in the form of a verbal noun; its nominative function was supplied by the infinitive.[10](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0001%3Apart%3D2%3Asection%3D10&force=y) In Latin pedagogy it is described as occupying a middle ground between verb and noun, formed from the present participle and translated into English with -ing.[11](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/stage-2-latin/lessons/lesson-23-gerunds-and-gerundives/)
Frequency of the -ing form in subject position has also shifted over time. In [Early Modern English](https://www.edgepedia.org/early-modern-english) the -ing form and the to-infinitive showed little difference in frequency in subject position; in the Late Modern English period the -ing form declined to a minimal level under the influence of prescriptive grammar, a trend that has since reversed in present-day English, where the to-infinitive in subject position is now used with extremely low frequency except in religious texts.[12](https://benjamins.com/catalog/scl.128.09yag)
## Gerund or infinitive after verbs
For language learners, the main practical difficulty is which verbs take a gerund complement and which take an infinitive. Verbs normally followed by a gerund include *appreciate, consider, enjoy, give up, keep, put off,* and *suggest*, as in *They're considering starting a company team*; verbs normally followed by an infinitive include *ask, decide, expect, intend, need, refuse, seem,* and *tend*, as in *I never expected to meet so many nice people*; and a third group allows either, including *begin, bother, continue, hate, prefer,* and *start*, as in *I started taking / to take a cooking class*.[4](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810090/40846/excerpt/9781009040846_excerpt.pdf) Both patterns also occur in the passive, following the pattern subject + verb + *being* / *to be* + past participle, as in *I kept being invited by my co-workers*.[4](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810090/40846/excerpt/9781009040846_excerpt.pdf) After a preposition, an English verb must take gerund form.[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php)
## Terminology
The label "gerund" is contested. Many grammarians avoid the term because there is sometimes no clear difference between a gerund and a present participle.[1](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php) The Collins Cobuild English Grammar (London, 1995) prefers "-ing noun", while other grammars keep a firm distinction between gerund and participle on the grounds that, despite having the same form, they function differently in a sentence.[5](https://dispace.edu.nstu.ru/didesk/file/get/283276) The tradition behind *The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language* instead treats the gerund and present participle as a single inflectional class, the gerund-participle, since the same verb form serves both functions.[6](https://truthbrary.mpaq.org/BOOKS/Languages%20-%20Dictionaries%20%28Books%29/Languages/The_Cambridge_Dictionary_of_English_Grammar_-_Pam_Peters.pdf) Under that analysis, a form like *showing* is described as the progressive participle plus gerund form of the verb *show*, one of up to five potentially distinct forms an English verb typically has.[13](https://assets.cambridge.org/97811088/13303/excerpt/9781108813303_excerpt.pdf)
## References
1. [Gerunds, Learn English (EnglishClub)](https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-gerunds.php)
2. [The essential guide to gerunds and infinitives, ELT Concourse](https://www.eltconcourse.com/training/initial/grammar_essentials/gerund_infinitive.html)
3. [Heyvaert, Liesbet, Maekelberghe, Charlotte, and Buyle, Anouk. Nominal and verbal gerunds in present-day English: aspectual features and nominal status. Lingua (ScienceDirect)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000118302808)
4. [Richards, Jack C., and Sandy, Chuck. Passages Level 2 Student's Book A, Grammar: Gerund and infinitive constructions, Cambridge University Press](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810090/40846/excerpt/9781009040846_excerpt.pdf)
5. [Main features of the formation and development of the gerund in English (course notes citing Collins Cobuild English Grammar, 1995)](https://dispace.edu.nstu.ru/didesk/file/get/283276)
6. [Peters, Pam. The Cambridge Dictionary of English Grammar, Cambridge University Press](https://truthbrary.mpaq.org/BOOKS/Languages%20-%20Dictionaries%20%28Books%29/Languages/The_Cambridge_Dictionary_of_English_Grammar_-_Pam_Peters.pdf)
7. [Fonteyn, Lauren. Categoriality in Language Change: The Case of the English Gerund, Chapter 5, Discourse Function. Oxford University Press, 2019](https://academic.oup.com/book/35315/chapter-abstract/299963967)
8. [Hayashi, Ono. The Gerund in the English Language: Its Historical Change and Development. Annual Bulletin of the Faculty of the Humanities, Matsuyama Shinonome College, 1993](https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1571135652274182272?lang=en)
9. [The gerund in the history of the English language, Acta Humanica et Linguistica (Lithuania)](https://egarp.lt/index.php/aghel/article/download/207/207)
10. [Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, Syntax of the Verb: The Gerund. Perseus Digital Library](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0001%3Apart%3D2%3Asection%3D10&force=y)
11. [Lesson 11: Gerunds and gerundives, Latin tutorials, The National Archives (UK)](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/stage-2-latin/lessons/lesson-23-gerunds-and-gerundives/)
12. [Yaguchi, Michiko. Diachronic changes in the use of the to-infinitive and -ing forms in subject position. In Grammar through the Lens of Corpus Linguistics, Studies in Corpus Linguistics 128, John Benjamins](https://benjamins.com/catalog/scl.128.09yag)
13. [Radford, Andrew. An Introduction to English Sentence Structure, excerpt, Cambridge University Press](https://assets.cambridge.org/97811088/13303/excerpt/9781108813303_excerpt.pdf)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Languages and linguistics › Linguistics › Grammar, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics › Grammatical categories, functions, and relations*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license