English has many adjectives that describe feelings that end in ~ed or ~ing, such as bored and boring. These adjectives actually come from verbs. For example:
- This book bores (verb) me. The book is boring (adjective). I am bored (adjective).
- This movie interests (verb) me. The movie is interesting (adjective). I am interested (adjective).
These adjectives are called participial adjectives. They are made by the participle of a verb. For regular verbs, participles end in ~ing (boring, the present participle) or ~ed (bored, the past participle).
Students often have difficulty choosing the correct adjective in a sentence. This lesson will explain how to use them correctly.
Adjectives that Describe Causes of Feelings: ~ing Adjectives
Adjectives like boring/interesting describe something that causes a feeling. For example:
It was a boring movie. The movie was boring. <-- The movie is the cause of the feeling. It creates the feeling.
This book is boring.
​​Adjectives that Describe Feelings: ~ed Adjectives
Adjectives like bored/interested describe the person (or animal) that is affected by this feeling. For example:
She was a bored girl. The girl was bored. <-- She, the girl, is the one who feels the feeling. She is the feeler.
She is bored.
These adjectives always describe a living thing that can feel (a person, animal, or alien maybe!). A thing (e.g. a book) cannot be bored. But, it can be boring.
Be Careful: People Can Cause Feelings
Sometimes the cause of a feeling isn't a book or a movie. Sometimes, it's another person. For example, there are interesting books and there are interesting people. My friend Jay is interesting. He is the cause of the feeling of interest in people he talks to. For example:
Carol had a date with John. John was boring. Carol was bored, so she left.
Common Participial Adjectives
Here are some basic adjectives that students should know.
| verb | ~ing adj (describes cause) | ~ed adjective (describes feeler) |
| bore | boring | bored |
| interest | interesting | interested |
| excite | exciting | excited |
| confuse | confusing | confused |
| surprise | surprising | surprised |
| tire | tiring | tired |
| annoy | annoying | annoyed |
There are many more participial adjectives as well.
Do you think you understand? Take the Quiz!
This grammar lesson bores me. I am because grammar is .
English doesn't excite me. English is not so I am not .
My job is . I have to carry heavy boxes all day. When I get home from work, I'm . If there is an show on TV, I'll watch it. If not, I'll go to bed.
I'm taking an English course at university. It is difficult. Sometimes English grammar is . Yesterday, my teacher tried to explain participial adjectives. I was . I was that everyone understood it but me.
I don't like people who speak loudly on their mobile phones. They are . Sometimes it sounds like they are arguing. Maybe they are just about what they are talking about.
Show Answers
This grammar lesson bores me. I am bored because grammar is boring.
English doesn't excite me. English is not exciting so I am not excited.
My job is tiring. I have to carry heavy boxes all day. When I get home from work, I'm tired. If there is an interesting show on TV, I'll watch it. If not, I'll go to bed.
I'm taking an English course at university. It is difficult. Sometimes English grammar is confusing. Yesterday, my teacher tried to explain participial adjectives. I was confused. I was surprised that everyone understood it but me.
I don't like people who speak loudly on their mobile phones. They are annoying. Sometimes it sounds like they are arguing. Maybe they are just excited about what they are talking about.
- Matthew Barton of Englishcurrent.com
this topic is very interesting& very important to me
Are the words interesting and interested related or different
Very good, thanks you
It’s very important how to know describing feelings and using the correct adjectives
Nice explanation, interesting, expecting a lot of postings.
very excellent and useful to all who are interested in English like me
Thanks a lot
i am very interesting to understand
​​Adjectives that Describe Feelings: ~ing Adjectives.
It’s very interstuing lesson, it was very helpful. I will share it with my classmates.
Thank you
It’s good for my student…Great
Help me a lot. thank you
Excellent
thank you..it’s really useful for me..!
It helped me.thank you
Easy to understand. Thanks
I really acknowledged to this post!
It really helpful
It was very helpful. Thank you very much.
It was very helpful…. Thank You!
Simple and clear. Thanks.
Excellent ! You made it so easy !Thank you .
It was Highly useful.
Why do we say “The mother is loving” and “The baby is loved?” That seems to be the opposite of the usual rule that the cause of the emotion ends in -ing and the person feeling the emotion ends in -ed.
Perhaps it has something to do with “love” being stative. Also, the meaning is a bit different than usual. “Loving” is a general statement about the mother, not the way she specifically relates to the baby. Conversely, “loved” is a statement that someone loves the baby, not a general characteristic of the baby. Still, I can’t figure out precisely what’s going on here.
Steve: ” Why do we say “The mother is loving” and “The baby is loved?” , not in that way, but Yes : ” She is a loving mother, he/she is a beloved baby”
Hello Steve. If you check your dictionary, you probably won’t find ‘loved’ as an adjective (but you will find ‘beloved’). Re: the sentence ‘The baby is loved’, I would say that is a passive construction.
Thanks, mb.
I think my question wasn’t clear. I understand that you can use the past and present participles of any verb of feeling as adjectives: bored/boring, interested/interesting, exhausted/exhausting, frightened/frightening, etc. It’s a rule of grammar, I believe — a way participles can be used, called “participial adjectives” — not a special definition for each word. The ordinary rule is that the past participial refers to the person who has the feeling and the present participle is the person or thing causing the feeling. “The student is bored.”, “The class is boring.” This web page explains that useage.
My question is why “loved” and “loving” work the opposite of other participial adjectives. The past participial, in this case, is the person causing the feeling, while the present participial is the person having the feeling.
The best I can come up with is that participial adjectives are rarely used with stative verbs. Thus, “love being stative,”, “loved” and “loving”, despite appearance, aren’t really participial adjectives but rather plain adjectives with their own meanings. (Incidentally, googling “define loved” does hit a lot of dictionary definitions.) That’s not very satisfying, though, because the statements of the general rule which I’ve seen (including the one on this page) don’t limit it to dynamic verbs (although the examples are all dynamic verbs.) I made up the rule myself based on observation, not any explanation I can find.
Can someone do better?
Hello. Re: ‘She is a loving mother’, I wouldn’t say this is an exception to the rule that the present participle is the person/thing causing the feeling. The mother is not having the feeling; her actions are creating it / she is causing it. ‘She is a loving mother. Her children are loved’. To me this is the same as ‘It is a boring movie. The audience is bored.’
Am I overlooking something?
You’re not helping. Why is that, Steve?
Incidentally, at least some other stative verbs work like “love:” “She is heard.” “He is known.” Perhaps the fact that “She is hearing” usually means that she’s not deaf supports the theory that these are special meanings of words derived from stative verbs, not participial adjectives.
Thanks for the thought, mb.
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that “She is a loving mother” is different from “she is a bored student.” The former is a general statement about the type of person she is while the latter is a statement about a feeling she’s having at a moment in time. In other words, “She is a loving mother” doesn’t describe a feeling, but rather a personality trait.
I’m inclined to think that participles formed from stative verbs don’t describe an instance of a feeling, so they aren’t covered by the rule described on this page.
Thanks a lot , I was hesitated about this grammar and these exercises helped me to figure it out !!!
Thanks a lot of.very good
Thanks. It was very good
thank you very much it’s great .
Nice explanation. But your titles don’t match with the adjectives you’ve used.
For example: you’ve written in the titles “-ed adjectives”, but in the explanation you’ve mentioned “boring/interesting”.
It was so useful
I enjoy it
Good explanation, but your examples are under the wrong headings, as Rafaela mentioned in December. This might confuse ESL students.
Thanks! I’ve corrected it.
Such a nice way to teaching.
Awesome sir. Keep it up.
Loving/loved has bothered me, too. The explanations about the verbs being stative and not describing an instance of a feeling is great.
This explanation is really great. It’s so helpful. Thank you.
Very informative and helpful too!
Very interesting and I’m very interested!
I like this excersize
As a different Steve posted before: loving / loved has bothered me. What I conclude is: Here is some difference between static and active verbs.
Sometimes I am confused, like “a interesting book, raised hand” .