Nouns are words that name a thing, or that denote a thing as a member of a class of similar things. English nouns may besubstantive (having a physical and tangible referent, such as a person, place, or object), or they may beabstract (having a non-physical or intangible referent, such as an idea or abstraction). Aproper noun is a special class of noun that names a particular thing. SeeAppendix:English proper nouns for more.
Many nouns in English have no ending that identifies them as nouns, but there are a number of suffixes common to nouns:
Nouns in English may becompound, where two nouns (or a noun and another word) have been combined to create a new noun. Such compounds may have the two components written together, with a hyphen, or with a space between them:
An English noun that refers to more than one thing is generally plural. Most English nouns form theirplural by adding-s to the end of the word.
Nouns ending in soft-ch,-s,-sh,-x, orz in the singular add-es instead. A few English nouns retain plural endings inherited from their Old English form. Likewise, a number of words borrowed from Greek, Latin, or other languages have irregular plural forms borrowed from the original language:
Collective nouns, however, refer to a group of more than one thing but are usually treated as singular nouns. In some regions, collective nouns are treated as plural if the verb indicates an action that each member of the group takes.
Nouns may becountable oruncountable. Acountable noun may be used with a numeral to indicate that there are several discrete instances of the object. Anuncountable noun (also called amass noun) refers to objects or substances that cannot be counted, or which are not normally counted. Not all countable nouns have a plural form that differs from the singular form, but uncountable nouns typically lack a plural form. Some nouns have both a countable and an uncountable meaning, depending on the context.
Some nouns are uncountable (also known asmass nouns), that is, they are not used in the plural. Many uncountable nouns denote substances (e.g. liquids, likewater), actions (e.g.talking), conditions (e.g.happiness), or certain other abstractions (e.g.mathematics anddescriptivism), which are difficult to separate into individual units. It is not always obvious from the referent, though, whether a noun is countable. For example,furniture is uncountable even thoughchair is countable. Many nouns have senses that are countable and other senses that are uncountable. In a restaurant, for example, one may order twowaters, using a sense ofwater that means “a serving of water”. Entries in this dictionary for nouns with uncountable senses indicate the uncountable senses with the taguncountable and the countable senses (if any) with the tagcountable.
Almost every noun has a meaning that allows a plural. Even nouns that are mainly uncountable in everyday use often form plurals in discussions by specialists in the associated fields of business, trade, craft, or science. For example, although "cement" is uncountable in everyday speech, specialists may compare different "cements", meaning types, or instances, or samples, or "pours" of cement.
Some nouns are always, or almost always, found in a plural form. These are calledpluralia tantum(“always plural”):
Nouns in English do not have grammaticalgender. However, some nouns have an implied gender that affects choice ofpronoun used when referring to that noun.
Some English nouns have two gender forms, one with an ending that implies a masculine referent, and one with an ending that implies a feminine referent. The masculine form of some pairs may also be gender neutral:
Apossessive form (a type ofw:genitive construction) indicates that its referent possesses or owns an object or property. Most singular nouns form thepossessive by adding's. Most regular plural nouns just add an apostrophe ( ' ) to the existings, but irregular plural nouns that don't end ins need to add both.
Most nouns can appear before another noun, modifying it in an adjectival manner, calledattributive. The adjectival meaning is directly derived from the meaning of the noun. In attributive use, the modifying noun – sometimes called anoun adjunct – is considered to remain a noun. A multiple-word noun phrase (acompound noun) is often written with hyphens instead of spaces to help the reader treat the phrase as a unit.
To determine that "amazon physique" contains a noun adjunct while "amazonian physique" contains an adjective, note these linguistic tests:
In English, attributive pseudo-adjectives are prepositive; that is, they precede the noun they modify. Historically, attributive nouns were simply treated as forming a compound noun, and hyphenated.
Many words may function like a noun in a sentence. In the phrase, "the undead are coming",undead acts like a noun and in grammatical terms is called a "substantive". This can happen with almost any adjective. Here are some tests to determine if a word is actually a noun, or just acting like one:
A variety of suffixes can be added to nouns to form adjectives. These include-y,-al, and-like .
Informally, many nouns can be used as a verb (inflecting with endings such as-ed,-ing or prefixed withto), depending on the type of noun what the verb version means. In particular, a location implies to go to that location, an activity implies to do that activity - but the specific meaning can generally be determined from the context.
Anoun phrase is a collection of words that functions together as a unit, with the noun identifying the core actor or recipient of the action. It may consist of a noun alone, or of a noun with one or more modifiers. The modifier may be anadjective,possessive, or adeterminer (such as anarticle,numeral, ordemonstrative). It may include a prepositional phrase or a clause that modifies the noun:
Noun phrases function as thesubject of a sentence or clause, as theobject of a verb or preposition, or as theaddressee of a sentence:
Most English nouns may be usedattributively (as if they were adjectives) to modify another noun:
Nouns used attributively usually precede the noun that they modify. The attributive use may either furnish a description (physical or of character) or provide information about the origin, composition, nature, or use of the following noun.
In many casesverbs,numerals, and other types of words have come to be nouns:
Adjectives,gerunds, andinfinitives may be used as a noun or noun phrase:
In these cases the words do not always behave grammatically like nouns in every way. For example, gerunds can be modified by adverbs, but nouns cannot. Infinitives cannot form a plural, be modified by adjectives, or be objects of prepositions.
Clauses with both their own subject and verb can function in some of the same ways that nouns can.