OBS. 11.—­Participles often become adjectives, and are construed before nouns to denote quality.  The terms so converted form the class of participial adjectives.  Words of a participial form may be regarded as adjectives, under the following circumstances:  1.  When they reject the idea of time, and denote something customary or habitual, rather than a transient act or state; as, “A lying rogue,”—­i.e., one that is addicted to lying. 2.  When they admit adverbs of comparison; as, “A more learned man.” 3.  When they are compounded with something that does not belong to the verb; as, “unfeeling, unfelt:”  there is no verb to unfeel, therefore these words cannot be participles.  Adjectives are generally placed before their nouns; participles, after them.  The words beginning with un, in the following lines may be classed with participial adjectives: 

   “No king, no subject was; unscutcheoned all;
    Uncrowned, unplumed, unhelmed, unpedigreed;
    Unlaced, uncoroneted, unbestarred.”
        —­Pollok, C. of T., B. viii, l. 89.

OBS. 12.—­Participles in ing often become nouns.  When preceded by an article, an adjective or a noun or pronoun of the possessive case, they are construed as nouns; and, if wholly such, have neither adverbs nor active regimen:  as, “He laugheth at the shaking of a spear.”—­Job, xli, 29.  “There is no searching of his understanding.”—­Isaiah, xl, 28.  “In their setting of their threshold by ray threshold.”—­Ezekiel, xliii, 8.  “That any man should make my glorying void.”—­1 Cor., ix, 15.  The terms so converted form the class of verbal or participial nouns.  But some late authors—­(J.  S. Hart, S. S. Greene, W. H. Wells, and others—­) have given the name of participial nouns to many participles,—­such participles, often, as retain all their verbal properties and adjuncts, and merely partake of some syntactical resemblance to nouns.  Now, since the chief characteristics of such words are from the verb, and are incompatible with the specific nature of a noun, it is clearly improper to call them nouns.  There are, in the popular use of participles, certain mixed constructions which are reprehensible; yet it is the peculiar nature of a participle, to participate the properties of other parts of speech,—­of the verb and adjective,—­of the verb and noun,—­or sometimes, perhaps, of all three.  A participle immediately preceded by a preposition, is not converted into a noun, but remains a participle, and therefore retains its adverb, and also its government of the objective case; as, “I thank you for helping him so seasonably.”  Participles in this construction correspond with the Latin gerund, and are sometimes called gerundives.