like the terms "blossoming," "gleaming," "resting," "aching," and so on. The grammatical name of long standing for words so formed is participle. They participate, they take part—in two meanings. But the essential point is not that there are only two meanings, instead of three or four, but that the two meanings refer to each other. Each of the two meanings is one of the pair. The word "blossoming" can mean: the given something that is blossoming—the rosebush or apple tree. If the word is intended in this sense, it designates what stands in bloom. "Blossoming" designates the given something that is blossoming, and intends this something by itself as that to which blossoming is fitting and proper. The word "blossoming," if it means, for instance, the rose, here almost represents the proper name for what it designates. In its linguistic form, it has the character of a substantive, a noun. "Blossoming," so understood, is used as a noun.
But blossoming may also mean "the act of blossoming," in contrast with "the act of wilting." What is meant is not the given plant that happens to be blossoming or wilting, but "blossoming, wilting." Here "blossoming" is used in its verbal sense.
Participles take part in both the nominal and the verbal meaning. This is something we learn in grammar school. We do not give it much thought. But at this time, and in this place, it is no longer sufficient to point out that participles have two meanings—as though all we had to do were to classify the word in question, ἐόν, being, as a participle. That classification is correct, of course, if we are content with grammar and with the fact that such words happen to exist in this linguistic form. Blossoming, that is something blossoming and the act of blossoming; flowing, that is something flowing and the act of flowing, and accordingly, then, "being" means something in being, and the act of being.