Parts of Speech - Nouns

What is a Noun?

parts of Speech - Nouns

A Noun (n)* is a word that identifies/refers to a thing, a person, a place, a feeling,  or their names. A Pronoun is a "noun substitute". A pronoun is used to avoid the unnecessary repetition of a noun.

Examples of nouns:

Things: food, car, building, apartment, shop,....  (singular and plural)
Persons: John, Simon (Names must start with capital letters), man, woman, girl, baby …
Animals: cat, lions, panda, buffalo,....
Places: School, home, garden, heaven, America (Names of countries and cities always start with a capital letter) …
Fruits: apples, tomato, orange, banana, ….
Feelings: anger, fear, joy, happiness, sadness, cleverness, trust, surprise, affection, honor …

Some words are nouns (n) and verbs (v) in the same time, like: love, help

Some nouns come as singular (only one) and can be plural (many), like (tree, trees, foot, feet) - We call them Countable (C)

Other nouns can not be plural (like happiness, anger, John, Ahmad,) - We call them UnCountable (UC)

These codes (C, UC, n, v,...) called "abbreviations" and they are used in dictionaries.

Pronouns are classified according to their function.

Types of Nouns:

Some people divide nouns into 10 types, others divide them into 3 major types, while some other tutors went for 13. Nouns can be classified according to what they refer to, simply as below:

1- Proper Nouns

2- Common Nouns

3- Possessive Nouns

4- Compound Nouns

5- Countable Nouns

6- Uncountable Nouns

7- Gerunds

Some sites and dictionaries also classify nouns as Gender-specific: Masculine and Feminine. Well, we will not need extra classifications anyway.

1- Proper Nouns

Explanation	Example words
Names of people, places or organizations. Always start with a capital letter	Mary, Rome, London, November, United States of America

2- Common Nouns

	Explanation	Example Words
A- Concrete Nouns	Something that is perceived by the senses. A real physical thing	doorbell, ice-cream
B- Abstract Nouns	Something that CANNOT be perceived by the senses.	advice, courage, fear, love, strength, truth, mystery
C- Collective Nouns	A group/collection of people or things. They take a singular verb (In same cases, they are treated as plural if the meaning is the individuals)	team, family, audience, band, staff, police

3- Possessive Nouns

Explanation	Example words
Show ownership of something. Ends in ('s). If the noun is plural, the " ' " (apostrophe) comes after the "s".	boy’s skateboard -> Singular possessive boys' skateboard -> plural Possessive

4- Compound Nouns

	Explanation	Example Words
A- Open/Spaced Compounds	Two or more words separated by a space	bus stop, railway station, police officer, maid of honor
B- Closed/Solid Compounds	no space or hyphen between words.	football, babysitter, hairdresser, earthquake
C- Hyphenated Compounds	Two or more words joined by a hyphen	dining-room, mother-in-law, full-time

5- Countable Nouns

	Explanation	Example Words
A- Singular	Refers to one person, place or thing.	man, car, city, leaf, quiz
B- Plural	Refers to more than one person place or thing.	men, cars, cities, leaves, quizzes

🔔 we use “many” with Countable Nouns.

- How many cars does this man have?

6- Uncountable Nouns (Mass Nouns)

Explanation	Example words
Nouns that are seen as a whole or mass. (Collective and Abstract Nouns are also Uncountable nouns). To quantify them, we use "measure words"*	advice, paper, tea, coffee, water, chocolate, electricity, money, rice paper -> UnCountable A Piece of paper -> C (singular) pieces of paper -> C (plural)

🔔 we use “much” with UnCountable Nouns.

- How much butter left in the fridge?

7- Gerunds

Explanation	Example words
Nouns created by adding "-ing" to the end of a verb. Note: -ing verbs can come as adjectives too.	singing, talking, playing I like baking. (gerund) I need some baking powder. (adjective) She is baking a cake. (Verb progressive)

*N. short form for (Noun). You can check a list of common abbreviations here

Measure Words with Uncountable Nouns

• a bar of chocolate
• a box of cereal | paper
• a can of cream | meat | tuna
• a carton of ice-cream | orange juice | milk
• a cup of hot chocolate | coffee | tea
• a drop of blood | oil | water
• a glass of beer | juice | water | wine
• a grain of rice | sand | truth
• an item of clothing | expenditure | news
• a jar of honey | jam | peanut butter
• a piece of advice | furniture | paper
• a roll of paper | tape | toilet paper | Scotch tape
• a slice of bread | cheese | meat | toast
• a spoonful of sugar | syrup | whisky
• a tablespoon of butter | honey | ketchup
• a teaspoon of cinnamon | medicine | salt
• a tube of glue | lipstick | toothpaste

Well, you will NEVER learn until you get your hand DIRTY. 

That being said, can you come up with at least one example for each noun type in the comments?