Thursday, October 05, 2006

Close, but no cigar.

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

One of the many usages of the word close is to convey the sense of distance between two objects. Another meaning would be to bring two things together to close an opening. ie. Please close the door.

When you close a door, would you say the door is closed or the door is close?

I would say the door is closed. The door may be close to the window but here I would like to emphasise on the fact that you closed the door hence I would say the door is closed.

If you look up in a dictionary, you would find close to be listed as both a verb and an adjective.

Close as a verb is defined as an act of bringing two things together to close an opening while close as an adjective is defined as a short distance between two objects.
(These are my definitions. To get proper definitions go look up in a dictionary.)

So close as an adjective can happily(and properly) be used with the verb 'to be'.
Example: The door is close to the window.

But how do you use the verb as an adjective?

Whenever a verb, when used as an adjective, is used in conjuction with the verb 'to be' it has to be used in its perfect form.

Example:

Close(present), closed(past), closed(perfect)
Present: Please close the door.
Past: He closed the door.
Perfect: He hasn't closed the door yet.
Verb as an adjective: The door is closed.

graduate, graduated, graduated.
Present: (I can't think of an example.)
Past: I graduated from a school here. I think that will be my only graduation in my life.
Perfect: Unlike my peers, I haven't graduated.
Verb as an adjective: (Not used. 'I is/graduated' is not proper English. Use 'I graduated' instead.)

open, opened, opened
Present: Open the door please.
Past: He opened the door.
Perfect: He hasn't opened the door.
Verb as an adjective: (Not used because open is an adjective. 'The door is open' is correct because open is an adjective.)

Confusing? Well as a summary,

'The door is close' is wrong. 'The door is closed' is correct.
'The door is open' is correct. 'The door is opened' is not used.

Have a pleasant Ramadhan.

Allah SWT knows best.

4 comments:

Asrif Yusoff said...

slamat berposa n raya sani

abd said...

yeah sure. make my day.

seLf rEstrained... said...

Graduate...
Present : i am a graduate..

*wink*

abd said...

Bismillah,

Although the usage of 'I am a graduate' is grammatically correct, the word graduate here is a noun and not a verb in its present tense.

Let us take the verb to mine(for gold or something) for example,

Present: I mine gold.
Pronoun: I am a gold miner.

But you should also know that I am neither an English native speaker nor a trained English teacher. This is just what I think is correct and it may be wrong.

Allah SWT knows best.

Disclaimer: I am neither an English native speaker nor a qualified English teacher.