Edit: to clarify, I mean when shops have a sign that says “open” versus “closed”. Why is it not “opened/closed” or “open/close”?
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OK so new question. Why is the adjective form of open ‘open’ and closed ‘closed’?
Open the door, close the door
The door is opening, the door is closing
The door is open, the door is closed
Basically it’s because there’s more to if a thing is a past-tense verb than if the word ends in “-ed”.
In this case, “open” is a present-tense verb AND an adjective. It just is. That’s how it’s defined in the dictionary. It doesn’t have to change letters, you just have to figure out which it is based on the sentence. In “Open the door”, it’s a verb. In “Go through the open door” it’s an adjective.
But “close” is only a verb. It is not an adjective. You can’t say, “Please open the close door.” Due to another quirk of English words, that sentence means something different entirely. For whatever reason the people who formed English decided that “closed” is an adjective.
Adjectives don’t have a tense because they aren’t objects. We can say, “The formerly-closed door is now open” to indicate it was closed in the past, but being very technical the verb in that sentence is “is” and it is present tense. “formerly-closed” is two adjectives describing the door.
Again, put shortly: adjectives don’t have tense. “Closed” is just an adjective that happens to look like a past-tense verb in this case. You have to see it in a sentence to know how it’s being used.
Because closed is the past? You close at a certain time, at that time or after you are closed?
I open it, I close it.
It is open, it is closed.
It was open. It was closed.
Tense isn’t the issue.
A theory – it removes the ambiguity between “close” (near) and “close” (to shut).
If we used “open” and “close” to specify the status of being open or not, in written English, we’d create ambiguity between a nearby door and a shut door. By using “closed”, we remove that ambiguity.
Also, in the other direction, there is a distinction between “the store was open” (was open at the time) and “the store was opened” (opening for the day, or perhaps for the very first time). The latter is rarely used but does have a slightly different meaning.
I don’t know, but if i were going to spend more time looking into it i would start with the germanic etymology of “open” vs the latin etymology of “closed”.
In English you can make adjectives out of the past participle of verbs. “Closed” is one such example, but also “hidden”, “sold out”, “renovated”, etc. Consequently, you can do the same with “opened” in theory, but it is not often used in practice (“The recently opened store” is an example where you cannot use “open”).
However, “open” is actually originally an adjective, and is cognate to adjectives in the other Germanic languages.
In fact, the adjective form “close” used to also exist in English (from wiktionary I found 1830, Thomas Thomson (chemist), The History of Chemistry, volume 1, pages 30–31:
As the alchymists were assiduous workmen—as they mixed all the metals, salts, &c… and subjected such mixtures to the action of heat in close vessels) likely under influence from the French word clos/close which is a past participle in French.
Summary:
Past participles may be used as adjectives. “Open” was originally a Germanic adjective which is now a verb. “Close” was originally a Latinate past participle which is now a verb. Nowadays, only “open” survives as an adjective, although “close” was also an adjective once.
How we word things depends on the tense, past, present, and future. A store is either Open for Business or Closed for business.
The present tense for Open: “We are Open.”
The past tense for Open: “We opened at 9.”
The future tense for Open: “We will open at 9.” or possibly “We will be opening at 9.”
Present tense for Close is “We are closed.
The past tense for Close is “We closed at 9.”
The Future tense for Close: “We close at 9.” or possibly “We will be closing at 9.”
Cause if it is open it is still open in the present but if it is closed it has been closed at some point in the past
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