Gerund noun or verb

Question

What part of speech is 'waiting' in this sentence? "After waiting my whole life to see Bob Dylan, the excitement was palpable."Many thanksAnnette

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

It's a gerund.

Clive

Mina wahidi · Answer

Are 'Gerunds' called only nouns ??
Regards!!

Deepak Chaliyath · Answer

i thing , gerund means a form of nouns....
like boring-- with "ING" ...A verb ends in -ing,that may be a gerund , i fell so. if i am wrong, please correct me as well.

Anonymous · Answer

Cheers Clive,
Thanks heaps.
Annette

Mina wahidi · Answer

I got my answer just right now that 'Gerunds' can be noun, verbs and adjectives <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

Mina wahidi · Answer

that's a link about 'Gerunds'

BillJ · Answer

AnonymousWhat part of speech is 'waiting' in this sentence? "After waiting my whole life to see Bob Dylan, the excitement was palpable."

Its part of speech is verb. You can tell that because it can be modified by an adverb like "patiently": "After patiently waiting my whole life ... Nouns, in general, can't be modified by adverbs. We call it a 'gerund' because it functions like a noun, and nouns typically function as complements to prepositions like "after", cf. "After many long years, I finally got to see Bob Dylan", where the noun "years" is underlined.

It's very important you understand that 'Gerund' is not the name of a part of speech category. Gerunds are either verbs, as in your example, or occasionally nouns as in this example:

"I witnessed the killing of the birds".

Here, "killing" is a noun, more specifically a 'gerundial noun'. You can easily tell it's a noun because it's marked as such by the presence of the determiner "the".

BillJ

Gerund noun or verb

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