Do you know what a past participle is? This article will provide you with all of the information you need on past participles, including its definition, usage, example sentences, and more!
Your writing, at its best
Compose bold, clear, mistake-free, writing with Grammarly's AI-powered writing assistant
According to 7ESL, the past participle is a verb tense that describes an action that has been taken in the past. The verb can modify a noun, noun phrase, adjective, or adjective phrase. Other forms of past tense verb include the simple past tense, past perfect tense, past progressive tense, and past perfect progressive tense. The past participle form of a verb usually ends in “ed” for simple past and past perfect verb in the English language and “ing” for past progressive and past perfect progressive tenses. Past participle phrases usually start with was, were, has, or had. Look at these examples from Your Dictionary and see if you can identity the past participle verb form:
The dog has dug a big hole in the back yard.
He was finished with the project.
We have been very worried about you.
The new bed was brought into the house carefully by the deliverymen.
The past participle also exists in Spanish. According to Spanish Dict, Spanish verbs are usually -ar verbs, -er verbs, or -ir verbs, meaning those are the suffixes the words end in. The past participle suffix replaces the infinitive ending with -ado, for -ar verbs and -ido for -er and -ir verbs. Hablar becomes hablado, tener becomes tenido, vivir becomes vivido, and so on. There are also irregular verbs such as abrir, decir, escribir, hacer, ver, volver, poner, componer, haber romper, freír (frito), morir, and more that might end in -cho or another suffix.
Many different languages also contain words that mean past participle. You may notice that some of these translations of past participle look and sound similar to one another. These are called cognates, which are words and phrases in different languages that likely have the same root or language of origin, causing them to sound the same. The below list of translations of past participle is provided by Word Sense.
Faroese: tátíðar lýsingarháttur (masc.), lýsingarháttur í tátíð (masc.), annar lýsingarháttur (masc.)
Lithuanian: būtojo laiko dalyvis (masc.)
What are other literary techniques and devices?
There are many different literary and grammatical techniques and devices that you might see when you are reading prose or poetry. It is important to recognize these terms because they are always used for some purpose. Knowing these devices can help readers understand the author’s deeper meaning and why they are using such a device. Take a look at the below list of grammatical devices from OED and see how many you know! Then try researching ones that are unfamiliar to you.
Overall, the past participle is a verb form that usually ends in ed for regular verbs and is different for irregulars. There are many verb tenses in English grammar, including the passive form of the verb, present perfect tenses, future tense, present progressive tense, perfect participle, future progressive tense, and other different forms.
Kevin Miller is a growth marketer with an extensive background in Search Engine Optimization, paid acquisition and email marketing. He is also an online editor and writer based out of Los Angeles, CA. He studied at Georgetown University, worked at Google and became infatuated with English Grammar and for years has been diving into the language, demystifying the do's and don'ts for all who share the same passion! He can be found online here.
Kevin
January 5, 2022
Common Questions
