I always think of verbal nouns as being pretty much like any other noun, except that they are derived from a verb and can be used to express that verb's infinitive form. Because it is derived from a verb and can be used in this way, I think of the related nominal entry in a dictionary as being a verbal noun, and all senses of this type of noun are just expressions of that verbal noun.

I have recently been questioned about this by someone who holds that one sense of the nominal entry is that of the verbal noun, and the rest are senses of an identical but non-verbal noun, regardless of the origin of these non-verbal noun senses.

Take, for example, the entry for [url=https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/úsáid]úsáid[/url] in Ó Dónaill:

It can be the (base) verb with two senses: 1. to use; 2. to abuse.

It can also be the noun with three senses: 1. VN of the verb, úsáid; 2. use, usage; 3. use, user.

To my mind, all three senses of úsáid as a noun are senses of a verbal noun, because that's just the type of noun úsáid is. The reason the first sense is listed as "vn. of úsáid" is because it can be used to form the would-be infinitive of that verb, among its other senses. However, is it the case that it is only a verbal noun when used in this way, and not when used as a noun meaning "usage"?


EDIT: I don't know why the URL doesn't seem to be working. Has something changed on the forum, or am I doing something wrong here?

As for the first question, I think you need to put a bracket "]" after the first "url=".

As far as your other questions, I don't know the answer. I just try to use words according to their denoted part of speech and learn phrases using those words in context. Maybe someone else can discuss and explain this.

One thing that differentiates verbal nouns from substantive nouns naming an action is their genitive – sometimes the nouns acting as verbal nouns (in constructions requiring a verbal noun, like infinitive-like one, or progressive construction) have different genitive (identical to passive participle) than the substantive noun – see eg. foghlaim, its regular substantive genitive is foghlama, but as a verbal noun it has foghlamtha (eg. chun a foghlamtha – (in order) to learn it/her, chun a bhuailte ‘to hit him’).

Also, some verbal nouns aren’t even derived from verbs, but rather from other nouns, especially names of professions – well, maybe verbal nouns isn’t the best term here, but they do name actions and behave similarly to verbal nouns – and they don’t have any directly equivalent verb. Take iascaireacht, you can say táim ag iascaireacht for ‘I am fishing’, but there is no verb directly related to it. Or táim ag amhrán ‘I’m singing’. But they are typically intransitive and so don’t appear in the infinitive construction, only in progressive.

But I tend to think about them like you do – as regular nouns that happen to name actions and can be used in some grammatical constructions. Especially since most of them, like úsáid and bualadh have only one genitive form.

As for the URL – you must use only ASCII characters, so any non-ASCII ones must be URL-encoded, eg. instead of https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/úsáid you must use https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/%C3%BAs%C3%A1id (most browsers, I think, do that automatically for you when copying the URL form the address bar, if not, you might use any online url encoder page, like eg. this one).