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Agree. You can of course treat "Boiling water" in its gerund form where it functions as a noun:

  "Boiling water should be performed in a metal pot".
> It’s a hazard, a cooking stage, a state of matter

All of these are ancillary and depend on context, but in every one of these downstream cases the same underlying process is happening: the water is boiling.



> the water is boiling.

Not necessarily. It might refer to heating water to bring it to a boil.

Q. What are you doing over there?

A. Oh, just boiling water.


That's using it as a [verb] [noun], not a gerund. If you are using it as a open compound word (or a gerund) - the "boiling water" IS in a boiling state.




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