Historically, grammarians have described a verbal noun or gerundial noun as a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The ''sacking'' of the city was an epochal event" (wherein ''sacking'' is a gerund form of the verb ''sack''). A verbal noun, as a type of nonfinite verb form, is a term that some grammarians still use when referring to

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ger) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, it is one that functions as a noun. The name is derived from Late Latin ''gerundium,'' meaning "which is ...

gerundive In Latin grammar, a gerundive () is a verb form that functions as a verbal adjective. In Classical Latin, the gerundive has the same form as the gerund, but is distinct from the present active participle. In Late Latin, the differences were lar ...

supine In grammar, a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages. The term is most often used for Latin, where it is one of the four principal parts of a verb. The word refers to a position of lying on one's back (as opposed to ' prone', l ...

s, and nominal forms of

infinitive Infinitive ( abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all ...

s. In English however, ''verbal noun'' has most frequently been treated as a synonym for ''gerund''. Aside from English, the term ''verbal noun'' may apply to: * the citation form of verbs such as the masdar in Arabic and the verbal noun (''berfenw'') in Welsh * declinable verb forms in Mongolian that can serve as predicates, comparable to

participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...

s but with a larger area of syntactic use

Types

Verbal nouns, whether derived from verbs or constituting an infinitive, behave syntactically as grammatical objects or grammatical subject. They may also be used as

count noun In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', e ...

s and pluralized but cannot be

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

vis-a-vis a given grammatical person. In English, gerunds used as verbal nouns comprise the suffix ''-ing''. Examples of such uses are given below: :: Killing the president was an atrocious crime. :: He was chastised for not leaving a tip for the server. :: Creating a backup file might be a good idea. :: Thanks for giving us a heads-up. Infinitives used as verbal nouns generally occur as prefaced by the

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

''to'': :: To be or not to be is the question. :: To become a U.S. president, one must be a natural born U.S. citizen. :: Try to stay calm. :: Finding time to exercise requires proper planning. Infinitives used as verbal nouns may not be prefaced by the particle ''to'', however, when elided via

ellipsis The ellipsis (, plural ellipses; from , , ), rendered , alternatively described as suspension points/dots, points/periods of ellipsis, or ellipsis points, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot,. According to Toner it is difficult to establish when t ...

: :: Having proper contacts might help you (to) get the job. :: They couldn't help but (to) notice and (to) snicker at the wardrobe malfunction. Verbs also may be nominalized through derivational processes, such as suffixes (as in ''discovery'' from the verb ''discover'') or by simple conversion (as with the noun ''love'' from the verb ''love''). The formation of such

deverbal noun Deverbal nouns are nouns that are derived from verbs or verb phrases. Formation Hausa Verbal nouns and deverbal nouns are distinct syntactic word classes. Functionally, deverbal nouns operate as autonomous common nouns, while verbal nouns r ...

s is not generally a productive process, that is, it cannot be indiscriminately applied to form nouns from any verb (for example, there is no noun *''uncovery'' for the verb ''uncover''). When they exist, such deverbal nouns often tend to replace the regularly formed verbal noun (as ''discovery'' is usually used rather than ''discovering'', although the latter is still common as a gerund), or else a differentiation in meaning becomes established.

Notes

{{Authority control Nouns by type