What are nouns?
A noun is a word that refers to a thing (table, basketball), a person (Simon Cowell, the president, my mother, a girl), an animal (dog), a place (New York, Disneyland, my bedroom), a quality (softness), an idea (freedom), or activity (swimming). It’s usually a single word, but not always: eye, feet, ice cream, mother-in-law, and time and a half are all nouns.
Nouns make up the largest class of words in most languages, including English.
Types of nouns
Nouns come in various types:
Common nouns vs. proper nouns
Common nouns define general objects. When using common nouns in a sentence, the word is not required to use a capital letter unless the common noun is at the beginning of a sentence. Common nouns are used in everyday situations, whether a person is talking or writing.
Example: The yellow butterfly landed on the young girl’s hair.
Proper nouns serve as the name for a specific place, person, or thing. When using common nouns, these words need to be capitalized.
Example: Over the summer, my family and I traveled to Greece and Italy to experience the diverse culture, food, and beaches.
Concrete nouns vs. abstract nouns
Concrete nouns describe physical objects that can be sensed: seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted. Most nouns are concrete nouns, for example, stones, birds, grandfathers, and the Eiffel Tower. Invisible things like air, which can be felt, and music, which can be heard, are also concrete nouns.
Abstract nouns are nouns that are derived from the use of the five senses. An abstract refers to something non-physical—something conceptual that you can’t perceive directly with your senses. Examples include “sadness,” “analysis,” and “adulthood.”
Singular nouns vs. plural nouns
Singular nouns represent only one thing, but plural nouns represent more than one. Plural nouns can be regular or irregular. The plural of house is houses, and the plural “houses” is regular. If someone stands alone, we call them a person (singular), but if there’s more than one person, we call them people. The plural “people” is irregular.
Countable nouns vs. uncountable nouns
Countable nouns are things we can count using numbers with singular and plural forms. The singular form can use the determiner “a” or “an.”
If you want to ask about the quantity of this noun type, ask, “How many?” combined with the plural countable noun.
Example: There are two potatoes and five tomatoes in the basket.
Uncountable nouns are intangible concepts or substances that cannot be counted. Uncountable nouns can take singular or plural forms. We cannot use “a” or “an” with uncountable nouns.
To express a quantity of this noun type, use a word or expression like much, some, a lot of, a great deal of, a bit of, or use an exact measurement like a bag of, a cup of, 1kg of, a pinch of, a handful of, a day of, an hour of. If you want to ask about the quantity of an uncountable noun, ask, “How much?”
Examples include sugar, tea, rice, air, water, evidence, knowledge, beauty, love, fear, anger, research, and money.
Collective nouns
Collective nouns describe groups of people, animals, or objects. Examples include herd (of animals), pack (of wolves), flock (of birds), swarm (of insects), shoal (of fish), group (of people), gang (of criminals), mob (of kangaroos), staff (of people who work in the same place), crew (of workers, like aircraft personnel), choir (of singers), orchestra (of instrumentalists, led by a conductor), panel (of experts), board (of people, usually professionals, who take on an advisory role), troupe (of actors or baboons), bunch (of grapes), series (of books), shower (of rain), and fall (of snow).
Compound nouns
We call two or more words that form a noun compound nouns. These separate words don’t necessarily have to be nouns themselves; all they have to do is communicate a specific person, place, thing, or idea.
A compound noun can be a common noun (ice cream), a proper noun (Pizza Hut), a concrete noun (ice cream), or an abstract noun (lovesickness).
Summary of the ten noun types
- Common: city
- Proper: London
- Concrete: bird
- Abstract: sadness
- Singular: table
- Plural: tables
- Countable: tomato
- Uncountable: sugar
- Collective: school (of fish)
- Compound: ice cream
