Definition of "participle" [par•ti•ci•ple]

• A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective, as the past participle baked in We had some baked beans, and is used with an auxiliary verb to indicate tense, aspect, or voice, as the past participle baked in the passive sentence The beans were baked too long. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In the sentence, The worm _crushed_ under my foot died, _crushed_, expressing the action as assumed, is, as you have already learned, a participle; and, as the action is completed, we call it a _past participle_."
• "The thing we call a participle, being a mixture of a verb and noun is nothing of itself, as are not the common names of male and female qualities (i. e, adjectives), but in construction it is put with others, in regard of tenses belonging to verbs, in regard of cases to nouns."
• "The past participle is here coincident in time with the preceding verb, ye were"