188 Glossary (compr avano , ‘they bought’, cant avano , ‘they sang’), the future (compr e- ranno , ‘they will buy’, cant eranno , ‘they will sing’), etc. gender  not the same thing as the actual sex of a living creature, grammat- ical gender is arbitrary; in Italian, all nouns are either masculine or feminine, even if they denote inanimate objects, e.g. il libro [m], ‘the book’, la casa [f], ‘the house’, etc. in fi nitive  the form in which verbs are usually given in word lists etc., e.g. vendere, ‘to sell’, dormire, ‘to sleep’. noun  the name of a thing, person, place, animal, plant, idea, e.g. the green door ;  John  is skinny;  love  is a wonderful  thing ; I love  cats  and  roses . number  a feature of nouns, pronouns and any words that agree with them (notably, in Italian, adjectives, articles and verbs) which shows whether there is just one, or more than one, of the thing or person in question. If there is one, then the noun, pronoun, etc. is  singular , e.g. the  mobile ; a  child ;  I / she / he / it ; if there is more than one, then the noun, pronoun, etc. is  plural , e.g. the mobiles ; the  children ;  we / they . In Italian, the form of the word usually makes it clear whether it is singular or plural, but in English it is often impossible to tell from the word on its own, e.g. one  sheep ;  fi fty  sheep ; Jim,  you are brilliant ; you are  all  brilliant . object  the noun or pronoun a ff ected by the action of the verb: a  direct object  is directly impinged on by the action, e.g. I sent  a letter ; the dog drank  its water ; you’ve shut  the door ; she cooked  it ; I love  him ; an  indirect object  is the thing/person to or for which/whom the action is performed, e.g. I sent a letter to  Jim ; I gave  her  a CD [i.e. a CD to her]; he built a snowman for  Catherine ; I made  her  a puppet [i.e. a puppet for her]. participle  a form of the verb that ‘participates’ in characteristics of both verb and adjective, i.e. it both indicates an action and describes something: the  present participle  in English ends in  -ing , and is used descriptively even with verbs in a past tense, e.g. she’s  running ; Wayne was  shouting ; the  past participle  in English (as in Italian) is mostly used to form the present perfect tense, e.g. the frog has  jumped  in; she’s  run  away; it can also be used purely as an adjective, e.g. it’s small but perfectly  formed ; that’s a torn  handkerchief. passive  a passive verb is the opposite to an active one. Here is an active verb: ‘Kylie  drew  that cartoon’; in this sentence, the thing that has something done to it (the cartoon) is the object of the active verb. Now here is the same idea expressed with a passive verb: ‘That cartoon  was drawn  by Kylie’; in this sentence, the thing that has something done to it is actually the subject of the passive verb. Many ideas can be expressed both actively and passively, e.g.