Verbal adjectives are verbs used to modify nouns, behaving like adjectives with tense attributes. They usually end in “-ed” or -ing”. They can be paired with objects and act as nouns. Not all words ending in “-ed” or -ing” are verbal adjectives, and irregular verbs have different past participles.
More commonly called a participle in English, a verbal adjective is a verb that is used to modify a noun. Although a verbal adjective behaves like an adjective in a sentence, it also has some attributes of a verb, such as tense. The past and present forms of these adjectives usually end in “-ed” and -ing, respectively.
Adjectives are used to modify or provide detail for nouns. Their spelling and structure do not change depending on the tense of the sentence and are usually found directly before the noun they modify or after a link or auxiliary verb, such as “to be”. For example, in the sentence “the red rose was fragrant” both “red” and “fragrant” are adjectives because they give details about a noun, the rose.
Verbal adjectives are usually placed before the words they modify and their spelling changes according to the tense of the sentence. This difference appears because verbal adjectives are verbs that play a different role. For example, in the sentences “the flying car” and “the open door”, both “flying” and “open” are verbal adjectives, based on the verbs “to fly” and “to open”. They get different endings, however, because the first sentence is in the present tense and the second is in the past tense.
As with other adjectives, an object can be paired with a verbal adjective, as in the phrase “running away from the monsters, he screamed.” The verb adjective in this sentence is “to run”. The word “monsters” is the item because it answers the question what was he running from. Also, these adjectives can be nouns, or take the place of the noun they are modifying, as in the sentence “Caring for the wounded.” The word “wounded” is the verbal adjective, modifying the assumed noun “people” which is not present in the sentence.
Although a verbal adjective usually ends with an “-ing” in the present tense and an “-ed” in the past tense, any word with these endings is not necessarily a verbal adjective. Verbs in the regular past also end in “-ed,” and although verbs of any tense don’t end in “-ing,” gerunds do. Gerunds, however, act as nouns rather than adjectives, as in “she likes to cook.”
Also, irregular verbs will not have “-ed” endings in the past tense, and usually their past participles will be different as well. For example, the verb “to write” is irregular. When used as a verb, the past tense is “written”, but the past participle, or verbal adjective, is “written” and is combined with the verb “ha” or “has”.
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