WHAT IS A PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVE?
You might be wondering, what is the origin of these participial adjectives? Why do we
Students who wonder what is a participial adjective might be confused by the way that
they have been explained in their grammar lessons or might not be sure how they
function in a sentence. Participial adjectives are hard to distinguish because often they
look like verbs, past participles, and other adjectives. This is because they often end in -ed
or -ing. Sometimes, they look like comparative adjectives, too, but they do not always
serve this function grammatically.
IDENTIFYING A PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVE
The participial adjectives are a major subclass of adjectives. They can be distinguished by
their endings, usually either -ed or -ing. Some exceptions to the rules
include misunderstood and unknown, which also function like these special adjectives.
They are called participial adjectives because they have the same endings as verb
participles.
FUNCTION IN A SENTENCE
These adjectives are really meant to function like any other adjective: basically, they help
to describe a noun. They might come from a verb form, or they might merely imitate the
structure, but they always function as a descriptive adjective. Let's look at some examples
of participial adjectives in sentences below. (Some example sentences have more than
one adjective.)
 The tempting cookie platter made my mouth salivate.
 The fascinating book was a thrilling read.
 The interesting story made a compelling point.
 Sally was bored by the conversation.
 My hardworking, tired mother deserves a break.
 My frustrating experience at the restaurant made me angry.
 I have been agitated long enough by your nonsense.
Participial adjectives form a very large portion of all of the adjectives in the English
language and help us be more accurate in our description of people, places, things, and
experiences when we speak and write. Generally, the past participle (ending in -ed) is
used to describe how someone feels, while the present participle (ending in -ing) is used
to describe what made them feel that way.
ADJECTIVES FROM A VERB
have so many of these describing words that actually look like certain verb forms? Some
of the participial adjectives that end in -ed have a corresponding verb form, whereas
others do not.
In other words, some adjectives only look like they come from verbs - and we still call
them participial adjectives. In this way, "to excite" becomes excited and "to determine"
becomes determined. However, there is no "to talent" that forms the participial
adjective talented.
It is more common that the participial adjectives that end in -ing have a corresponding
verb form. These include annoying, exasperating, worrying, thrilling, misleading,
gratifying, and time-consuming.
WORDS TO MODIFY PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVES
Participial adjectives do not just come in one form. You can modify participial adjectives to
increase or decrease their intensity and use them to compare different nouns. This can be
accomplished by using intensifiers like very, extremely, more, and less, or by
forming comparative and superlative forms. Look at the examples below, using the
adjective annoying:
 Annoying
 Very annoying
 Extremely annoying
 Less annoying
 More annoying
 Most annoying
In all of these forms, annoying serves as the participial adjective but it is treated
differently in each case. Look at a few ways we can use the above treatments of annoying
in a sentence:
 She was so annoying.
 He is extremely annoying.
 It was more annoying to me that he did not cancel in advance.
 The most annoying thing was that she did not speak up for me.
INVENTING A PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVE
Some participial adjectives have no corresponding verb form since they are created by
putting a noun together with a participle, such as "drug-induced coma" or "energy-saving
technology." In the former example, "drug" is the noun combined with "induced," the
participle. In the latter example, "energy" is the noun put with "saving," the participle.