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Is the word daring a gerund in this sentence?
I have never seen the word "daring" used like this. Is this a gerund or something else. Please explain why. I am pretty bad at grammar and I am curious to understand it better. If you could give examples, that would be great.
Here is the sentence
"Tabby’s name stood out, as did the creature’s particular daring, and I had the strange sense of already knowing that the poor thing was doomed to a gruesome and shocking end: hunted and murdered by a pack of wild cats, some pages later—by which time I was marvelling both at the various peculiarities of the book and at my unsettling ability to forget them."
And here is the article where it came from.
1 Answer
- ?Lv 68 years agoFavorite Answer
What a great question. I keep coming back to this question---"what -ing nouns aren't gerunds?"---as well. I'm glad I had the excuse to put some thought into this. And my final answer is. . .
daring: n. Audacious bravery; boldness.(1)
Not all -ing nouns are gerunds, such as a building. If you can put an indefinite article in front or make it plural, chances are you do not have a gerund (a building; buildings). A daring--this works; so does a boldness. Darings---this doesn't, but neither does boldnesses. Maybe it's just an abstract noun(2) (can't be made plural). Well that sure cleared things up---NOT.
The appropriate verb definition for dare in this sentence is "To be courageous or bold enough to do or try something."(3) This isn't an action; rather, it's something intrinsic to the individual. "Gerunds are action-oriented verbs that function as nouns."(4) Since it's not an action, I don't think you can call it a gerund.
However, if you were using the definition "To challenge (someone) to do something requiring boldness"(3), as in "Daring your sister to jump out of the window was really stupid," I believe you could call it a gerund since the person is actually doing the action of daring someone.
Well, that was fun. Now back to work. Of course, this is all IMHO.
Source(s): (1) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/daring (2) http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/noncount.ht... (3) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Dare (4) http://www.elementalenglish.com/2012/02/ing-action...
