Often called a ‘naming word’
in primary schools, a noun is used
to refer to a person, thing or quality. Nouns are a very common feature of
language and they are categorized into various classifications as follows.
A common noun refers to something of which there are many examples and so is very common. The following words are examples of common nouns: apple, band, car, city, country, day, dog, man, month, planet, religion, street.
A proper noun, on the other hand, refers to something in
particular of which there is only one example. Unlike common nouns, proper nouns begin with a capital
letter. Thus, the following words are examples of proper nouns:
Granny Smith (type of apple), Beatles (name of pop group), Buddhism,
Volkswagen (trade name of type of car), London, Sweden, Wednesday, Doberman (type of dog), Jack (name of man), March, Mars (name of planet), Scotland
Street.
A concrete noun refers to something that you can touch. The following
are examples of concrete nouns:
bag, carpet, door, flower, grape, hand, lake, monkey, orange, pan, road,
shoe, window.
An abstract noun refers to something that you cannot touch. In other
words, it refers to a quality, concept or idea. The following are examples of abstract nouns.
anger, beauty, Christianity,
courage, danger, fear, greed, happiness, loyalty, Marxism, wisdom, youth.
Countable and uncountable nouns
A countable noun, also known as a count noun, is a noun that can be preceded by the word ‘a’ and can
exist in a plural form. When the plural form is used it is not usually preceded
by a determiner, but is used alone. Most concrete
nouns are countable. The following are examples of countable nouns:
city (plural cities), gate (plural gates), foot (plural feet), hat (plural hats), lady (plural ladies), monkey (plural monkeys), mouse (plural mice), taxi (plural taxis), window (plural windows).
In the following sentences
the underlined words, either in the singular or plural form, are countable nouns:
I’ve just bought a flat
there.
I prefer cities to the
countryside.
Open the door please.
The child believes in fairies.
The church is over
there.
There are mice in the
house.
An uncountable noun, also known as an uncount noun, is a noun that cannot usually be preceded by the word
‘a’ or ‘an’ and does not usually exist in a plural form. Abstract nouns tend to
be uncountable. The following are examples of uncountable nouns:
They lived in poverty.
Our luggage went
missing.
We are waiting for vital information.
You should put sugar
in this pudding.
Education is an obsession with her.
I put some petrol in
the car yesterday.
I’ll have a kilo of flour,
please.
Could I have a slice of bread?
When the present participle functions
as a noun it is known as a verbal noun (see 1) or gerund.
The verbal noun is so called
because, although formed from
a verb, it functions as a noun, acting as the subject of a
sentence. In the following sentences the underlined words are verbal nouns or gerunds:
Smoking is bad
for your health.
Stealing is a
crime.
Jogging is good exercise.
Swimming is his favourite sport.
NB:
Countable and uncountable nouns
Some nouns exist
in both countable and uncountable forms. One example is the word cake which is countable in the example
The child ate three cakes.
and uncountable in the example
Do have some cake.
Another example is the word light which is countable in the example The
lights in the house suddenly went out.
and uncountable in the example
She was
depressed by the lack of light in the winter.
In some
situations it is possible to have a countable
version of what is usually an uncountable
noun. Thus, although the word sugar
is usually considered uncountable,
as in the example
Add a little sugar to the mixture.
it can be used colloquially as a countable noun in the example I take two sugars (= teaspoonfuls of sugar).
Similarly, although the word tea is usually considered uncountable, as in the examples
I would love a cup of tea.
and
She invited me to tea.
Tea can be used colloquially as a countable noun in the example I’ll have two teas without sugar, please.
Sometimes the verbal noun can act as the object of a
sentence. In the following sentences the underlined words are verbal nouns or gerunds acting as the object of a sentence.
I don’t enjoy swimming.
She hates dancing.
She gave up smoking.
He took up jogging in
the park.
They loathe eating in
restaurants.
The young men love drinking
in pubs.
She took to giving
noisy parties late at night.
Nouns or pronouns that
qualify verbal nouns or gerunds should be in the possessive case (see
personal pronouns, possessive determiners, possessive determiners (see 1), possession), as in:
My mother hates my
smoking in her house.
The head teacher objected to our
wearing casual clothes on the school trip.
In these sentences the words my and our are both in the possessive case.
However, there is a general tendency to think of gerunds as being a very difficult area of the English language. The result is that most people do not understand that the gerund should be preceded by a noun or pronoun in the possessive case and they, instead, use an object, as in:
My mother hates me
smoking in her house.
The head teacher objected to us
wearing casual clothes on the school trip.
Although ungrammatical, such usage is becoming more and more common.
A collective noun is
a singular noun that refers to a group of things or people when the whole group
is being considered. In the following phrases the underlined word is a collective noun:
a pack of wolves
a flock of sheep
a herd of cattle
a school of whales
a shoal of herring
a fleet of ships
a pride of lions
a swarm of flies
a gaggle of geese
a constellation of
stars.
Singular and plural forms of nouns
Regular singular forms of nouns
Most English nouns have a
different ending for ‘one’ of something (called the singular form) than they do for ‘more than one’ (called the plural form). In the case of the majority of nouns the plural
is formed regularly simply by adding s
or es to the singular, as in bat/bats, monkey/monkeys, church/churches.
In cases where the singular noun ends in a consonant followed by y then the plural form regularly becomes
ies, as in fairy/fairies.
The following is a list of common nouns with their regular plural forms:
banana bananas
bush bushes
dog dogs
elephant elephants
friend friends
house houses
kiss kisses
lady ladies
march marches
porch porches
road roads
story stories
table tables
taxi taxis
umbrella umbrellas
variety varieties.
Irregular plural forms of nouns
Some nouns do not form their
plural in the above regular ways. Instead their plural forms are said to be
irregular.
Some irregular plurals are formed, not by
adding an ending to the singular form, but by changing the vowel in the
singular forms, as in man/men, or by
having a completely different form from the singular, as in mouse/mice.
The following are examples of nouns with their irregular plural forms:
foot feet
goose geese
tooth teeth
woman women.
A few irregular
plural forms are formed by adding ‘en’ to the singular form, as in ox/oxen. In the case of the word child the letter r is added before the en.
Some nouns ending in f form irregular plurals ending in ves,
as in loaf/loaves. The following is a
list of such nouns with their plural forms:
half halves
leaf leaves
scarf scarves
wife wives
wolf wolves.
NB:
Irregular and regular forms
The word hoof can either have the irregular plural form hooves or the regular plural form hoofs. The word roof usually has the regular plural form roofs.
Some nouns in English have a
plural form that follows the spelling rules of the foreign language from which
they are derived, as in stimulus (stimuli). The following are examples of
such words with the plural form in their original foreign language:
bacterium bacteria
bacillus bacilli
criterion criteria
larva larvae
phenomenon phenomena.
Some irregular plural forms
are the same as the singular form of the noun.
These include sheep, salmon
and grouse (the game bird).
There are some words, such as
jeans, scissors and trousers, which are only used in the
plural form and have no singular equivalent form. To refer to any of these in
the singular the construction a pair of
jeans, scissors or trousers is
used.
NB:
Foreign plurals
In modern English
there is a tendency to anglicize the plural forms of foreign words. Many of
these co-exist with the original foreign plural form, as thesaurus (thesauri/thesauruses). Other examples include formula (formulae/formulas), appendix
(appendices/appendixes), index (indices/indexes) and gateau (gateaux/gateaus).
In
the case of the words appendix and index the two plural forms are used in
different contexts. The plural appendices
is used in a literary context, as in the appendices
added as additional information to a book, whereas the plural appendixes is used in a medical context,
as in the surgical removal of appendixes.
The plural indices is usually used in
a mathematical context, whereas the
plural indexes is usually used in a
literary context to refer to a guide to a book.
Many languages, such as
French and German, are affected by the concept of grammatical gender. Thus, in
French the word hill is feminine (la colline) according to grammatical
gender, although in gender in the real world it would be neuter. Similarly, the
German word for a mountain (der Berg)
is masculine in terms of grammatical gender, although in the real world it is
neuter.
This is not true
of English because English nouns tend to be grouped according to the natural
distinctions of sex, or, where appropriate, absence of sex. Thus, we have the
gender categories of masculine, feminine
and neuter and a man or boy is classified as masculine,
a girl or woman is classified as feminine
and a table or chair as
neuter.
The words in the following list are masculine:
bridegroom, brother, duke, drake, emperor, father, husband, king,
nephew, prince, son, widower.
The words in the following
list are the feminine equivalents of the words in the masculine list:
bride, sister, duchess, duck, empress, mother, wife, queen, niece,
princess, daughter, widow.
The words in the following list are neuter:
apple, bottle, car, desk,
egg, house, letter, newspaper, road, shoe, town, window.
Some nouns in English, such
as child, can either refer to a male
or a female, unless the sex is indicated in the context. The words in the
following list fall into this category:
adult, architect, artist, athlete, baby, author, cousin, doctor, parent,
secretary, singer, student, teacher.
Some words in the dual gender
category, such as author, poet, sculptor
and proprietor, were formerly
automatically assumed to be masculine and they had feminine forms, as in authoress,
poetess, sculptress and proprietrix.
The rise of the Women’s Movement in the 1960s with its concern for the equality
of women in society gave rise to a corresponding concern for sexism in
language. Words such as authoress and
poetess were thought to be sexist and
are now generally thought to be unacceptable. However, some feminine forms,
such as waitress, are still in common
use and both actor and actress are used for a female actor.
The need to remove sexism
from language also resulted in the increase in use of the word person to form compounds that could
refer to either a man or a woman and were, therefore, of dual gender. Such
words include chairperson and spokesperson. These replaced chairman and spokesman which were hitherto
thought to be able to apply to a man or a woman, although they sounded
masculine.
(See he under Pronoun.)
Many nouns, known as compound
nouns, consist of two or more words. A
compound noun is a fixed
expression that is made up of more than one word and functions as a noun in a
sentence or clause. Most compound nouns consist of two nouns or an adjective
and a noun, but some, such as cover-up and make-up, are derived from phrasal verbs and
some, such as passer-by and looker-on, are derived from a noun plus adverb. A few compound nouns consist of a letter of the alphabet
and a noun, as in X-ray and U-turn.
Some compound nouns are written as two words, as in estate agent, some are separated by a hyphen, as in pen-friend,
and some are written as one word, as
in housewife. Sometimes which style
of writing you use for compound nouns is a matter of choice. For example, babysitter can also be written as babysitter and spinoff can be written as spinoff.
If you want to be consistent in your writing, it is best to select a reliable
dictionary and follow its recommendations.
The words in the following list are all examples
of compound nouns:
air conditioning, bank account, blood pressure, coffee jug, doorstep,
fairy tale, frying pan, health centre, housewife, income tax, letter-box,
make-up, musical instrument, nail varnish, passer-by, police station, seaweed,
swimming pool, teapot, washing machine.
Plural forms of compound nouns
The plural forms of compound nouns vary according to the
type of words they are made up of. If the final word of a compound noun is a
countable noun, the plural form of the countable noun is used when the compound
noun is made plural, as in swimming pools,
police stations, letter-boxes and coffee jugs.
Compound nouns that are directly derived
from phrasal verbs (see 1) usually
have a plural form ending in s, as in
cover-up/cover-ups and show-off/ show-offs.
In the case of compound nouns which consist of a count noun and an adverb the plural form of the noun is used before the adverb when
the compound noun is in the plural
form, as in passers-by and lookers-on.
Nouns and noun phrases in apposition
A noun or noun phrase is said
to be in apposition when it is
placed next to another noun or noun phrase and provides further information
about it, especially by saying something that identifies or describes it. In
such a situation, the main noun or phrase and the amplifying noun or phrase
refer to the same
person or thing. In the
following sentences the underlined words are in apposition:
My eldest brother, the acting head of the firm, has called a
shareholder meeting. My nearest neighbour, the
owner of Grange Farm, has kindly offered to check in on my house while I am
away.
George Jones, a well-known local lawyer, is standing in the local
council elections.
The man who caused all this trouble, the children’s father, has
walked away without punishment.
For punctuation see The comma with nouns or
phrases in apposition.
