Verbals

Lots of words can be more than one type of grammatical type, for instance the word ‘run’ can be both a verb and a noun. It can pop up as a noun in a sentence like this:

We did a long run on the weekend.

But it can also be a verb, like in this sentence:

Sally had run all the way home from school.

You can create a verbal by taking a normal verb and changing the word to make it into a noun or an adjective. For instance, take the verb ‘run’. If we add ‘ing’, we change it into a noun, like this:

Running might make you feel more relaxed.

Or you could use it even more directly as an adjective:

The running club is lots of fun.

In this sentence, the present participle ‘running’ is used to directly describe the noun ‘club’.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Infinitives