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Hot Tip: Differentiating Ing Vs Ed In English Adjectives

There’s a difference between being “interesting” and “interested.”
Hot Tip: Differentiating Ing Vs Ed In English Adjectives

English, as a language, famously doesn’t make a great deal of sense. But once in awhile, you get a few good rules of thumb you can rely on, like in the case of adjectives that end in -ing vs. -ed. Which one is it?

Babbel Live teacher Michel says, “One thing that I find regularly crops up is the confusion between using -ing vs. -ed at the end of adjectives.”

Though Michel personalizes feedback according to each student, here are his typical guidelines for mastering this grammatical quandary:

  • An -ing adjective is used to describe the characteristic of a person, a thing or a situation.
  • An -ed adjective is used to describe an emotion or feeling. In Michel’s words, “It is used to describe a temporary thing.”
Looking for more tips like this from top language teachers?
Steph Koyfman
Steph is a writer, lindy hopper, and astrologer. She’s also a language enthusiast who grew up bilingual and had an early love affair with books. She has mostly proved herself as a New Yorker, and she can introduce herself in Swedish thanks to Babbel. She also speaks Russian and Spanish, but she’s a little rusty on those fronts.
Steph is a writer, lindy hopper, and astrologer. She’s also a language enthusiast who grew up bilingual and had an early love affair with books. She has mostly proved herself as a New Yorker, and she can introduce herself in Swedish thanks to Babbel. She also speaks Russian and Spanish, but she’s a little rusty on those fronts.

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