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All About Nouns and Types of Nouns
Ahh nouns and types of nouns! remember the days when we’d be sitting in school, faces wrinkled with resentment, and minds resonating with but one question, “Just when will all this preaching about types of nouns come to an end?” And then the day finally arrived; we moved on from elementary school, we were ready to take on the world, our faces radiant with all the brimming knowledge on types of nouns and related matters that we had become empowered with. Life, was going to be a piece of cake; or so we thought.
Read on what is a noun?
And then came high school, college, undergrad studies, formal training, etc. And amidst all this new gush of awareness, somewhere we lost connection with the concepts that had been taught to us at one point in time and our hold on matters pertaining to types of nouns also loosened with time; we were still using nouns in our daily interactions, but we weren’t really sure as to what was what. And this here, serves as a refresher to those of us who seek to get reacquainted with the types of nouns that are out there.
6 Types of Nouns Used in English Language and Grammar
There are six types of nouns which are used in English language.
- Common noun
- Proper noun
- Collective noun
- Abstract noun
- Concrete noun
- Count and mass noun
In addition to these types of nouns, pronouns are also an important type of noun. Let’s study them in detail along with examples.
Common and Proper Noun
Definition of Common Noun
A word used to denote a person, place or object is referred to as a Common Noun.
Examples of Common Noun
Common noun denotes something ordinary and mostly starts with out capitalizing the word. For example,
- city
- woman
- leaf
- building
- firm
- book
- author
- movie
Definition of Proper Noun
A Proper Noun is the name of a specific person, place, or object, and always has the first letter in upper-case.
Examples of Proper Noun
Few examples of proper noun are
- New Orleans (city)
- Queen Elizabeth (woman)
- Maple (leaf)
- Eiffel Tower (building)
- General Electronics (firm)
- The Alchemist (book)
- William Shakespeare (author)
- The Reluctant Fundamentalist (movie)
Collective Noun
A word used for a group of objects, animals, or people is referred to as a Collective Noun.
Here’s a comprehensive list of collective nouns and their usage in English language.
Examples of Collective Noun
The thing to watch out for when working with Collective Nouns is that some nouns remain the same in both plural and singular states e.g. fish. A few more examples of these types of nouns are:
- a pack (of wolves)
- a band (of musicians)
- a school (of fish)
- a platoon (of soldiers)
- a swarm (of bees)
- a collage (of pictures)
Abstract Noun
The one that I personally found to be tricky is Abstract Noun. It represents a quality, idea, concept, event, philosophy, and other things that cannot be perceived concretely.
Examples of Abstract Noun
Abstract nouns represent such nouns which cannot be counted, for example
- Power (the power to hate)
- Freedom (we have the freedom to express)
- Passion (his passion flows through my veins)
- Love (their love is as radiant as the sun)
Concrete Noun
Concrete nouns represent nouns which we can see or touch. Concrete nouns are the opposite of abstract nouns. These types of nouns be countable or uncountable depending upon the thing they refer to. If the concrete noun refers to something separate and individual, it is countable. On the other hand, concrete nouns referring to material or substance are uncountable.
Examples of Concrete Noun
Concrete nouns represent physical things which can be counted or felt or seen. For example,
- aeroplane
- door
- hammer
- parcel
- mobile phones
- wallpaper
Count and Mass Noun
Count nouns are types of nouns which are countable while mass nouns refer to uncountable nouns. Count nouns or countable nouns are singular or plural. Mass noun or uncountable noun can neither be singular nor plural. Some types of nouns can be either count or mass, depending upon the context. For example,
- peel an onion
- a pizza with onion.
Here first term can be counted while second one is uncountable.
Examples of Count Noun
Count nouns represent the exact quantity of something. For example,
- house
- laptop
- students
- trees
- babies
Examples of Mass Noun
A mass noun cannot be used with a or an because it refers to a group, quantity or mass of some object. For example,
- butter
- water
- advice
- bread
- wood
Pronouns
Pronouns can be thought of substitutes; they take the place of nouns when making a reference to people, place, or objects. Pronouns have sub-types that have been elaborated upon below:
- Personal Pronouns: I, You, He, She, It, They
- Possessive Personal Pronouns: Mine, Ours, Hers, His, Theirs
You can read more articles on important parts of a sentence i.e. verb, adverbs, adjective etc in our Grammar section.
Hopefully this refresher in types of nouns will help you fellow readers to reinforce the knowledge that already exists up there in our heads; I know it did that for me!
References
- Eastwood, J. (2005). Oxford Guide to English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
- Hall, M., & Azar, B. S. (2014). Basic English Grammar. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
