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Common participle adjectives
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| past participle | present participle |
| bored | boring |
| confused | confusing |
| depressed | depressing |
| disappointed | disappointing |
| discouraged | discouraging |
| disgusted | disgusting |
| embarrassed | embarrassing |
| excited | exciting |
| fascinating | fascinated |
| frightened | frightening |
| frustrated | frustrating |
| interested | interesting |
| relaxed | relaxing |
| shocked | shocking |
| surprised | surprising |
| Satisfied | satisfying |
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Express emotions using
past and present participles.
Many students have trouble with past and present participles. How does one know when to
use the past participle and when to use the present participle? Let's look at a few sentences.
a.) The lecture this morning was really boring. I was so bored I almost fell asleep.
b.) My history teacher is such an interesting person. Thanks to him I'm more interested in history than before I took his class.
In sentence a.), the speaker had the feeling of being bored. That feeling was caused by the
lecture. In sentence b.), speaker had an interest in history. The feeling of interest was
caused by the history teacher. So, the rule is this; use the past participle (verb+ed) to
describe how a person feels. Use the present participle (verb+ing) to describe the cause of
a feeling. Another good rule to remember is that an inanimate object (non-living thing) cannot
have feelings; therefore, it cannot be described using the past participle (verb+ed), you
must use the present participle (verb+ing). For example, a book cannot be interested, it can
however, be interesting.
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