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'

Try another grammar lesson

Language level

A1 Elementary

A2 Pre-intermediate

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Hello Maahir,

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Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Thanks for your answer.

Thanks for this. Such contents are really helpful and interesting.

I really interested in grammar lessons

When the abj end with ed it's describe someone feeling or emotion and other think It's cause of emotion or feeling understand this think but some it's make me confusing.

it was a really interesting lesson. Thanks a lot for it.

Clear explanation with many examples! Thanks for this lesson.

This lesson is really great and helpful to me.I. clearly understand your explanations about the difference between "ed" and "ing". Thank u for your clear explanations.

Hello! You said adjectives plus ed plus ing .So, the question is here , why there are some adjectives we do not add ed or ing for them? For example - ill , angry , sad and so on .Thanks .

Hi rational1,

The adjectives with -ed and -ing are made from verbs (e.g. bored and boring come from the verb bore; annoyed and annoying come from the verb annoy).

But not all adjectives are like this. Some adjectives aren't made from verbs, like the examples you mentioned.

Does that make sense?

Jonathan