Turning verbs into nouns

Question

If you add ING to a verb does it turn into a noun??? (is this a rule?)

ex: He killed 4 people.

It was a horrible killing last night.

(bonus question: If you add en to a noun does it automatically turn it into a verb?ex: straight-straighten)

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

dominique 4595If you add ING to a verb does it turn into a noun??? (is this a rule?)

Generally you can use a present participle as a noun in a sentence. It is still a verb, though, in that it can have an object, be modified by an adverb, and have an optional subject. If there are modifiers, objects, and other associated words, we say it is the head word in a non-finite clause.

For example:

Seeing is believing. (Two gerunds linked by the verb "is")

Running with scissors is not a safe thing to do. (A non-finite clause as the subject of the verb "is")

Because of his careless act of running with scissors, Jose will be scarred for life. (A non-finite clause as the object of the preposition "of")

dominique 4595(bonus question: If you add en to a noun does it automatically turn it into a verb?ex: straight-straighten)

No. "straight" is an adjective, not a noun.

There are different suffixes that transform root words to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Pure (adjective) - purify (verb) - purification (noun)

Beauty (noun) - beautify (verb) - beautiful (adjective)

Length (noun) - lengthen (verb)

Prevent (verb) - prevention (noun)

BillJ · Answer

dominique 4595
If you add ING to a verb does it turn into a noun??? (is this a rule?)
ex: He killed 4 people.
It was a horrible killing last night.

I think you're asking about those ing verb-forms which by a process called 'conversion' can also belong in the noun category (part of speech).

All but a handful of lexical verbs have an ing form, and some of those ing forms can also be nouns, or more precisely gerundial nouns.

In your example "killing" is a noun, as is evident from the fact that it is modified by the adjective "horrible", and it has the determiner "a". Another decent example is "breaking":

There's no point in breaking the seal. [verb]

Ed witnessed the breaking of the seal. [noun]

In the first example, "breaking" can only be a verb since it has "the seal" as direct object. In the second, "breaking" is clearly a noun since it is determined by "the", and it has an of phrase complement (verbs do not take such complements, nor combine with articles).

Turning verbs into nouns

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