Infinitives and Gerunds

What are they and why should I care?

 Both infinitives and gerunds are when a verb is acting like a noun. An easy way to understand how grammar works in English is to ask what the word is doing, not what it is. We use words differently in different situations and this is a great example of that. Maybe you want to talk about your opinion on doing a particular verb, maybe you’re giving an explanation on how to do a particular verb. Both of these are why we use gerunds and infinitives.

How do they work?

Gerunds

 Gerunds and infinitives are similar in use, but are very different in how they’re made and they’re never used together. When using a gerund we end the verb with “-ing.” Examples of this would be “Walking, talking, and thinking.” You may be wondering “how do I know that this isn’t just the present continuous form of the verb?” The answer is as clear as whether or not there is a form of “be” with the verb. If there is some kind of “be,” whether that’s “am, is, or was” then what you have is a continuous verb. If you don’t, then it’s a gerund and you’re talking about the verb in question. Here are some examples of gerunds:

“Running away from small dogs looks silly.” Notice that there is no form of “be” near the word “running.” This is how we know that we’re talking about the act of running, even though no one is doing it.

“Rick is running away from the small dog.” Once you’re done laughing at Rick, notice that we’re using a form of be after the noun and before “running,” this is a clear sign that someone is doing the action, which makes it a continuous verb.

Infinitives

 Infinitives are much simpler, we add “to” right before the base form of the verb. Nothing at the end of the verb unless you want to, it isn’t necessary to put anything else before the verb unless that’s what you want. It really is that easy, and I’ll show you some examples:

“Keith wanted to start a family of his own in Alabama.” Here we see “to start” and that is a good hint that we have an infinitive. Another hint is that we're talking about something that isn’t taking place, but an idea that Keith has.As we discussed at the beginning of our blog about nouns, an idea is a noun and that notion of “to start” is an idea that we can see in the word “wanted.” We call hints like this “context clues” and they help us better understand what a particular word is doing as well as the overall meaning of the sentence. Let’s take a look at one more example of an infinitive:

“Rick is afraid to deliver the package because his old friend might be there.” At this point in Ricks task, “to deliver” is only an idea. Some context clues that we see are “is afraid,” followed by an explanation starting with “because.” 

 As implied earlier, we can give instructions with infinitives. To do this, we usually put the infinitive at the beginning of the sentence, but not always. Just remember to look for instructions.

“To relax the small dog, offer it a treat and don’t touch it.”

Notice that we’re giving Rick some advice, first we use the infinitive “to relax” because it’s an idea. We’re not doing it, it’s Ricks job. Until Rick does it, “to relax” is just an idea.

New Vocab Word!

Harrowing 

Adjective

• Causing fear, stress, or pain

Example:

“Raymonds walk across the bridge was particularly harrowing because he was afraid of heights and the bridge carried a harsh sway.”