10-29-2011, 06:31 PM
(10-29-2011, 05:24 PM)grannyjill Wrote: A fun read. I enjoyed it. (I especially liked the title)My 'Nuttall's Stanard Dictionary of the English Language' of 1929, gives 'a participial noun expressing the action of the verb'. What it means is: forget all the -ing words which are (a) really just a part of a verb eg, in the present tense we may say 'I fuck' or 'I am fucking' (b) words which are really behaving like adjectives eg 'What a fucking cheek' . You are left with a rather select band of -ing words, which are part verb, and part noun, thus 'He was OK but his fucking was a bit of a let down, and his fucking my best mate was bang out of order'. I think what your Webster's is trying to get at, is to exclude (correctly) 'Brilliant fucking is what I most like', where 'fucking is plainly acting purely as a noun, so that it could not have an object, as a true gerund can 'His fucking me was the high point of my life' (how many times have I heard that?), where it is qualified by 'his', yet still has an object 'me'. Clear as mud? Well, that's fuckingerund for you.....
Can a steal a moment to ask for help in identifying 'gerunds' ....my Webster's Dictionary isn't a big help
"a verbal noun used in all but the nominative case" I am now regretting sitting in my English grammar lessons drawing pictures of Robert Horton instead of listening....I think none of these 'ing' words are gerunds, but I could be wrong. I don't know my participle from my elbow.
