Word of the Month: Giving

From the verb to give: 1. freely transfer the possession of an object to another 2. grant (permission, opportunity, etc.) to someone 3. impart, bestow or communicate 4. yield to pressure note: When a verb changes into a noun by adding “-ing” to the end, it is called a gerund. You can spot a gerund as the subject on the sentence, a direct object, an indirect object, or an object of a prepositional phrase. But adding “-ing” to a verb can also create a present participle. A present participle completes a progressive verb (an action still in progress) as well as acts as a modifier (describes, defines, limits, or modifies a verb or noun). Can you spot the difference in these sample sentences? “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” William Arthur Ward, 1921 – 1994 “It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” Mother Teresa, 1910 – 1997 “Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.” H. Jackson Brown, Jr., 1940 – “Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” Lao Tzu, c. 500 BCE “It is the heart that does the giving; the fingers only let go.” Nigerian Proverb “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison, 1847 – 1932