Edit: to clarify, I mean when shops have a sign that says “open” versus “closed”. Why is it not “opened/closed” or “open/close”?
In: Other
That’s because we say “The shop **is** open”, emphasising that it’s open to customers *right now*, but the verb “close” (as in “shut down”, not “near”) cannot be used in the same way, so instead we say “The shop **has been** closed”. Both “open” and “closed” can be used as adjectives (“open shop” and “closed shop”), so they still make sense on either side of a sign.
I’ve got no idea, but I would be totally not surprised it was done to differentiate “the shop is close” and “the shop is closed”.
For a time English was somewhat isolated and it lost common features of Indo-European languages which modify the start/end of a word. Or those features were diminished. E.g. German words are often long because they stack endings that turns one word type (noun, verb, adjective) into another or change the meaning slightly. One way to still do that in English is using the past participle to turn a verb into an adjective.
Further English words can have pretty board definitions. As in they encompass what non-native speakers perceive as multiple concepts. So to differentiate between two meanings at some point it became convention to use the adjective “close” to mean “near” and turn “to close” into “closed” to mean “shut”.
Because it is currently (present) open, or was closed (past) earlier.
Opened implies the inception of the store, not it’s state of being
“Open” is present tense because when the sign is displayed the message is “We are currently open for business”.
“Closed” is past tense because when the sign is displayed the message is, “Sorry, we closed up shop and closed and locked our doors at some point in the past. You missed it.”
The shop is currently open as opposed to being closed whenever they close. If you see the closed sign they already closed
If you consider both words as adjectives (not verbs) then it’s ok. I teach English as a 2nd Language.
I like what I call the disambiguation theory for why we have such odd words and spellings of words in English. Often times the best explanation of “why” we use a particular word or spelling is because the alternatives would be ambiguous. And in the case of Open/Closed you are describing a binary situation, the opposite of ambiguity, so there is pressure linguistically speaking to be crystal clear.
‘Close’ is ambiguous because it can be interpreted as a command verb, an adjective, or a noun, and it has a variety of meanings some of which can be confusing. In old English, they did actually say ‘close’ to mean ‘closed’. But a sign that said “close’ for example could be interpreted as meaning you were close to where you wanted to be, or just a command to keep a door closed for example, and not the state of the store.
“Open” has a number of meanings but they I think they all work for a door sign. Also the concept of being open is that of an ongoing state. If you say “opened” it moves the state into the past. It was opened, but is it still?
Each word kind of has an “origional” form (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) and when we want to use the word in a different form, we make changes to it. When we use it in the origional form, we don’t change it.
Close is originally a verb, so we make a change to it when we use it as an adjective — in this case, we use the past tense of the verb to turn it into an adjective.
Open is originally an adjective, so we don’t really need to make changes to it when we use it as an adjective.
As an English as a second language speaker, this one is something I’ve thought about. And it was recently. Good question.
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