Active participles (-ущий, -ащий, -вший)

Streamlining with Active Participles

When you want to describe an animal in motion or an active natural process, you might instinctively use the word который (which/who/that). For example: "The eagle which is attacking..."

To write more concisely and sound more advanced, you can replace the который clause with an active participle ("The eagle attacking..."). Participles are verbal adjectives: they describe an action, but they decline just like regular adjectives, matching their noun in gender, number, and case.

Present Active Participles

To describe an action happening right now, use the present active participle. To form it, take the "they" (3rd person plural) form of a present-tense verb, drop the final -т, and add -щий (yielding suffixes like -ущий, -ющий, -ащий, or -ящий).

When a participle phrase comes immediately after the noun it describes, it must be set off by commas.

Reflexive Participles

If the original verb is reflexive (ending in -ся or -сь), the participle will also be reflexive. For active participles, this suffix is always -ся, which gets attached to the very end of the word, right after the adjective ending.

Declining Participles

Because participles function as adjectives, their endings must change to perfectly match the case of the noun they modify. If the noun is in the genitive or accusative case, the participle must be too.

Past Active Participles

To describe an action that was actively happening in the past, use the past active participle. These are formed by taking the past tense stem (which usually matches the infinitive without the -ть) and adding -вший.