My sister got this question in an English quiz the other day, and it's stumped my mum, her friend, myself, my English teacher, and another friend who is a grammar nerd.

Basically, in a phrase like 'dripping wet', what kind of word is 'dripping'
Adverb, verb, adjective, etc.

It's been annoying me for a few days, I have a gut feeling that it's an adverb, and that's what everyone else has said, but I'm after more opinions.

Any thoughts?

Adverbs "describe", if you like, a verb, i.e. they give information about a verb. e.g. the running was fast, therefore the man was running "quickly". However, there is no verb apart from dripping, so I don't think it can be that. Also, i don't think dripping is an adverb. Although I could easily be wrong. An adjective is a "describing word", i.e. it describes an object. The "wet" is doing that/ So I don't think it's that. "Dripping" is, in normal use, at least, the present progressive, or present continuous form (they both mean the same thing) tense of the verb "to drip". It is my feeling that it is used as a verb. Water is dripping from the object (verb.) This has then become, in speech, dripping wet, which is an idiomatic phrase. Idioms don't necessarily have to make literal sense - e.g. an ivory tower is neither a tower, nor is it made from ivory. But that's just a theory which could easily be wrong. You may like to try posting this in the English only section of the wordreference forums. (forum.wordreference.com)

In a phrase like dripping wet, the word 'dripping' is an adverb. Remember, adverbs describe or modify verbs, other adverbs, OR adjectives.

For example, if the sentence was: "The girl was dripping wet," then 'was' is the verb and 'wet' is the adjective. Since 'dripping' is modifying 'wet' (i.e., how wet? Thoroughly wet), 'dripping' functions as an adverb.

Thankyou Pagie! Those were the lines that mum and I and another guy I asked were thinking along.

Pagie, are you an English teacher?

Oops, nevermind! I just checked your profile. I just asked because your answer was very clear.

Yes, I am an English teacher. I'm glad my answer was clear...I can butcher things occasionally. :-)

If dripping is an adverb what is the verb?

*Was* would be the verb in the sentence given ie "The girl was dripping wet."

I think that the difficulty arises from the questioner trying to seperate 'dripping' from 'wet'. In fact 'dripping wet' is describing a degree of wetness. Dripping should remain married to wet and be seen as a compound adjective like scorching hot, very difficult, relatively simple.

Couldn't the girl also be 'slightly wet', or 'extremely wet'? In that case, the 'dripping' does not relate to the verb 'was'.

'Dripping' is therefore a word that further defines an adjective, whatever your school of grammar chooses to call that!

When a word has the characteristics of a verb and an adjective isn't it called a gerund?

So I would answer "gerund".

I'm not a guru or even an English teacher, but have two cents to throw into the pot.

English grammar is interesting because words are so versatile. We often think of them as "being" a certain part of speech without realizing that "part of speech" refers not to some intrinsic identifying element but to how the word is used.

What part of speech is book? Everyone will answer, "noun," because a book is a tangible, familiar thing. But what part of speech is it in this sentence?

Lester's chief joy is a book sale.

Here, book functions as an adjective modifying sale.

Or,

Max called immediately to book a flight.

Here, it's a verb.

So, dripping would first be identified by most of us as a verb--a present participle, to be exact. But when is acts as a noun it's called a gerund, as in

Dripping is a sign that your faucet needs a new gasket.

And it can function just as well as an adjective:

Max found the dripping faucet to be as enormously amusing to him as it was maddeningly annoying to Lester.

Poor Lester couldn't stand it any longer, and attacked the faucet with a wrench. (spanner) Now he's not only hopping mad but dripping wet. As he deftly replaced the gasket, Max observed that the word now functioned as an adverb: one that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb, and that Lester had tapped the tap too hard.

Lester's voice dripped with sarcasm (verb) as he suggested that Max quit being a drip (noun) and book an appointment at the book store before he had him booked for loitering.

Edited to add:
So, Lioness, what does your sister's teacher say?

Adverbs also modify other adverbs, as in, "She very rarely eats garlic prawns."
She--pronoun and subject
very--adverb, modifies rarely
rarely--adverb, modifies eats
eats--verb and simple predicate
garlic--adjective, modifies prawns
prawns--noun; object of the verb

Wondering if this might be helpful?
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/adverb.html

Or this:http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/piping.htm (piping hot being a similar case).

Isn't there also something called a gerundive? I'm not actually sure whether it exists in English, but from my memory of studying other languages, such as Latin and German, a gerundive is in the same form as a gerund, but functioning as an adjective.

In which case, I would say that dripping is a gerundive, rather than a gerund.

But then I could be wrong!

Carol <><

Although I don't want to argue with any English teachers out there, I always assumed that in those phrases, the rule is that if it ends in -ing, it;s a verb. Microsoft word apparently agrees with me, but what does it know? Humans can do a computer's job twenty times better (unless it's access the internet...)