- 1nC1
/ˈdʒerənd/
A noun made from a verb by adding -ing, for example shopping in the sentence I like shopping.
動名詞
複數 gerunds
核心畫面
Picture a verb that has been packed up into a thing. Swim is something you do; swimming can sit in a sentence where a noun sits — Swimming is good for you. The action hasn't disappeared, it has just been given a name so you can talk about it, like it, hate it, or be good at it.
一個動作被打包成了一樣東西。swim 是你做的事，加上 -ing 變成 swimming 之後，它就可以坐進句子裡本…更多收起
一個動作被打包成了一樣東西。swim 是你做的事，加上 -ing 變成 swimming 之後，它就可以坐進句子裡本來屬於名詞的那些位置——Swimming is good for you.（游泳對你有益。）動作沒有消失，只是被取了個名字，於是你可以談論它、喜歡它、討厭它、或者說自己擅長它。中文裡不太需要這個轉換，「游泳」本來就能當名詞用；英文得靠 -ing 這個外衣來完成同一件事，這也是為什麼中文母語者常常忘了加。From the word’s history
From Latin gerundium, built on gerō "to carry out, to do" — literally the form for the thing that is to be done. The Latin name already treats an action as something you can point at and name, which is exactly what the modern gerund does.
來自拉丁文 gerundium，字根 gerō 是「執行、做」的意思，整個字大致是「那件將要被做的事」。連拉丁文的命名方式都已經把「動作」當成一個可以指著談的東西了——這正是現代 gerund 在句子裡做的事。
Wiktionary (gerund): Learned borrowing from Latin gerundium, from gerendus, future passive participle of gerō ("carry, bear")
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
gerundnoun/ˈd͡ʒɛɹənd/
- 1
grammarhuman-scienceslinguisticsA verbal form that functions as a verbal noun. (In English, a gerund has the same spelling as a present participle, but functions differently; however, this distinction may be ambiguous or unclear and so is no longer made in some modern texts such as A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language)
- Compounds in which gerunds are the second element look exactly like compounds in which present participles are the second element, but different principles of hyphenation apply.
- Like any noun, the gerund functions as a subject, direct object, indirect object, object of the preposition, or predicate nominative. The gerund phrase is made up of the present participle ("-ing") and can contain an object and/or a modifier (and sometimes many modifiers). The gerund is a verbal noun.
- 2
grammarhuman-scienceslinguisticsIn some languages such as Dutch, Italian or Russian, a verbal form similar to a present participle, but functioning as an adverb to form adverbial phrases or continuous tense. These constructions have various names besides gerund, depending on the language, such as conjunctive participles, active participles, adverbial participles, transgressives, etc.
- The Spanish gerund is quite unlike the English -ing form (‘walking’, ‘replying’, ‘saying’, etc.), which can function as a gerund, a present participle, a noun or an adjective; and it is also unlike the French form ending in -ant, which covers the functions of both the Spanish gerund and the adjectival form in -ante, -(i)ente discussed at 19.4.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。