Locate the complete Gerund phrase and identify its use.

We avoided the holiday crowd by shopping early.

Gerund phrase:

Use:

The complete gerund phrase is "shopping early".

Explanation:

In the sentence above, the complete gerund phrase is "shopping early". Gerunds are words that are formed with verbs but act as nouns. For instance, the gerund "shopping" is derived from the verb "to shohp".

A gerund phrase is a phrase that begins with a gerund but acts as a noun. In this case, the gerund phrase acts as the object of the preposition "by".

The gerund phrase is:shopping early Use:noun