Donmai

tag group:verbs and gerunds

This tag group defines and sorts action-related tags according to their definition as a verb or a gerund. There is often debate regarding what tags should be used as a verb or a gerund, so this page should hopefully clear up any disambiguation. If there are any alias or implication changes made to a verb or gerund tag, it should be updated here as well.

Verbs

Refers to a finite verb conveying an action, an occurrence, or a state of being (with the verb to be). It is very difficult to write a complete sentence without using a verb in the English language. They can be written in three different tenses; past, present and future. On Danbooru, they are written in present participle to denote that a character is doing something at that moment in the image. The action might be a freeze frame for us (unless it's an animated image), but it is occurring for them in the present and should be tagged as such. A lot of verbs are written in the present tense for this reason, many ending with -ing. If you can also call that verb an object, it should be listed in the gerunds category. This group is for words that can only possibly be treated as an action.

List of tagged verbs

Gerunds

For Danbooru's purposes, a gerund is a non-finite verb that can also function as a noun. A verb written in -ing form can be turned into a subject or noun depending on how the sentence is structured. For instance, let's use the sentence, "Tagging images on Danbooru helps to narrow down a search". The gerund here is tagging because it is being treated as the subject rather than the action; the actual verb here is helps because it is describing how useful tagging is.

As stated above, and mainly for this site, an -ing verb can also refer to an actual object, not just a verb being turned into a subject. Examples including building (the act of constructing something vs. the actual structure itself), drawing (the act of doodling on paper vs. the completed picture itself), or wedding (the act of being wed vs. the ceremony). If you're able to call an -ing word both a verb and a noun, it should fall under this list as a gerund. Many of these gerunds already have the -ing verb aliased to them, and their wikis often have the phrases, "As a verb, it is the act of..." followed by, "As a noun..." to clarify the term both as an action and an object.

List of tagged gerunds

Ambiguous

For tags that may fall in one category, but further discussion is required to define which one.

More references