Adjectives ending in '-ed' and '-ing'

Adjectives ending in '-ed' and '-ing'

Do you know the difference between bored and boring? Test what you know with interactive exercises and read the explanation to help you.

Look at these examples to see how adjectives ending in -ed and -ing are used.

I was really bored in that presentation.
That was a really boring presentation.

Try this exercise to test your grammar.

Grammar test 1

Grammar test 1: Adjectives ending in '-ed' and '-ing'

Read the explanation to learn more.

Grammar explanation

Adjectives that end in -ed (e.g. bored, interested) and adjectives that end in -ing (e.g. boring, interesting) are often confused.

-ed adjectives

Adjectives that end in -ed generally describe emotions – they tell us how people feel.

I was so bored in that lesson, I almost fell asleep.
He was surprised to see Helen after all those years.
She was really tired and went to bed early.

-ing adjectives

Adjectives that end in -ing generally describe the thing that causes the emotion – a boring lesson makes you feel bored.

Have you seen that film? It's really frightening.
I could listen to her for hours. She's so interesting.
I can't sleep! That noise is really annoying!

Here are some adjectives that can have both an -ed and an -ing form.

annoyed annoying
bored boring
confused confusing
disappointed disappointing
excited exciting
frightened frightening
interested interesting
surprised surprising
tired tiring
worried worrying

Do this exercise to test your grammar again.

Grammar test 2

Grammar test 2: Adjectives ending in '-ed' and '-ing'

Average: 4.4 (146 votes)
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Hello Hulawa,

Here we need an adjective which tells us how the students feel, so we use the -ed adjective: Students are excited about...

I explained this in a little more detail in my answer to your other question on the same topic (with the example about the bear).

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Hello! İ have a good solution for this problem. Look! Action can do only people and animals, alive subjects. Things can't do action. Ok. So if we speak about people you can use -ed (verb +Ed=action). İf you speak about things you can use -ing (verb +ing= adjective). For example
Movie was boring. We were bored about this movie
Students are excited about the lesson. The lesson is exciting

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Submitted by Ahmed-Hussien on Mon, 03/07/2023 - 13:18

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actually, I understood the difference between adjectives ending in '-ed' and adjectives ending in '-ing- ,But in the first sentence the pronoun for the dog was she
do we use pronouns he and she with animals or we use it ?

Hi Ahmed-Hussien,

Both "she/he" and "it" are used. People tend to use "she" or "he" if the speaker has some significant relationship with the animal (e.g. it is a family pet).

Jonathan

LearnEnglish team

Submitted by jhonertk on Tue, 27/06/2023 - 13:11

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the lesson is very practice

Submitted by Ahmed_Elkhodary on Sat, 24/06/2023 - 08:11

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It's really exciting lesson, I am very excited

Submitted by Ro Htan on Fri, 16/06/2023 - 14:55

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Traveling abroad is thrilling to me and it makes me interesting.