Hatched

Question

Can I say,(a) The duckling hatched from the egg.(b) The duckling was / had / has hatched from the egg. (c) The dutckling hatched out an egg.(d) The duckling was hatched on the nest.

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

Can I say,

(a) The duckling hatched from the egg. Yes

(b) The duckling was / had / has hatched from the egg. Yes

(c) The dutckling hatched out an egg. No.

(d) The duckling was hatched in on the nest. Yes

Why not just say simply 'The duckling hatched'?

Clive

Vincent Teo · Answer

Thanks. Can I say,

The duckling hatched out the egg / out of the egg.

P/s: We can use "active " and "passive" sentence for the word "hatched"?

Vincent Teo · Answer

Can tell me the reason?

Mr Wordy · Answer

Vincent Teo
The duckling hatched out the egg / out of the egg.

The duckling hatched out of the egg.

The duckling hatched from the egg.

Vincent Teo
P/s: We can use "active " and "passive" sentence for the word "hatched"?

You can use "hatched" in a passive sentence, but when there's no obvious other thing doing the hatching it seems kind of redundant to me. For example, if by "The duckling was hatched from the egg" you simply mean "The duckling hatched from the egg" then why not say that?

When there's something else doing the hatching, the passive makes more sense:

The park rangers hatched the duckling.

The duckling was hatched by the park rangers.

When "hatched" is used figuratively, there's usually an agent doing the hatching and the passive voice is usually fine:

The rebels hatched a cunning plot.

A cunning plot was hatched by the rebels.

Vincent: I don't know how good your English is. Can you understand what I wrote above? If you can't then I will try to write simpler replies in the future.

Vincent Teo · Answer

Thanks. I get what you mean.

I just want to comfirm if I just say:

(b) The duckling was / had / has hatched from the egg.

(Are there all correct? Although we can just say, "The duckling hatched from the egg.")

I just confused, Clive says all the above words are correct, but you don't encourage us to use "was / had / has hatched".

Mr Wordy · Answer

The duckling hatched from the egg.

The duckling has hatched from the egg.

The duckling had hatched from the egg.

These are all correct English, and written in the active voice. They differ in tense.

The duckling was hatched from the egg.

The duckling has been hatched from the egg.

The duckling had been hatched from the egg.

These are all correct English, in the same tenses, but written in the passive voice. They indicate that someone or something else performed or facilitated the hatching, rather than the duckling simply hatching by itself. If this is what you want then the passive sentences are OK. Otherwise (and probably in the majority of cases), use the active sentences.

Mr Wordy · Answer

Actually, there's another aspect to this. This might be over-complicating things, so if it just confuses you then ignore it.

In the passive sentence "The vase was broken by John", it's important that the vase was broken by someone and we're told who that is. However, in the sentence "The vase was broken" the person or thing that broke the vase may be unimportant, to the point of almost "vanishing". We may care only about the vase's state -- that it was broken. In this case the word "broken" functions more-or-less like an adjective.

The extent to which past participles such as "broken" can behave as adjectives depends partly on which verb is used. "Hatched" does not behave in this way as strongly as "broken", but there may still be a hint of it. For example, in "The duckling was hatched from an egg" it is possible to consider "hatched from an egg" as adjectival (just describing the duckling's status), rather than as a passive construction where there is an important other thing that hatched the duckling.

Hatched

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