What is a noun?
A noun is a word that identifies a person, place, object, idea, etc. Nouns are either common nouns or proper nouns.
The different types of nouns are listed below.
Common noun
A common noun refers to places, objects, ideas, or things without specifying them, e.g., country, shoes, joy, trees. Common nouns are lowercase unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence.
Proper noun
A proper noun is specific in nature and always begins with a capital letter. These usually include names of places, phenomena, institutions, or people, e.g., Denmark, Halley’s Comet, Judaism, Sam.
Concrete nouns
Concrete nouns are nouns that refer to material things rather than abstract concepts, e.g., dogs, buildings, carrots.
If you can reach out and touch it, see it, smell it, taste it, or hear it, it’s probably a concrete noun. For example, we may not think of a “velvety voice” or a “nauseating stench” as tangible because they are not objects, but “voice” and “stench” both refer to concrete nouns.
Abstract nouns
Abstract nouns, on the other hand, are nouns that refer to ideas and non-material concepts, e.g., anger, peace, trust, anxiety. You can’t perceive these things with your senses, so they are abstract.
Abstract nouns include philosophical ideas, e.g., capitalism, democracy. They can also be proper nouns, such as when these ideas are named after people, e.g., Confucianism, Marxism.
In some rare cases, the same noun can be either concrete or abstract depending on context. This is because a concrete noun can be used figuratively, thus linking it to an abstract idea. For example, compare the noun “house” in the following sentences:
With the help of the firefighters, we got out of the burning house.
“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?” (James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time)
In the first sentence, “house” is a concrete noun because “burning house” refers to a literal house on fire. In the second sentence, “house” is an abstract noun, because Baldwin uses “burning house” to refer to an abstract idea, the racial inequality and unrest in 1960s America.
Compound nouns
Nouns can be combined to create compound nouns. Compound nouns consist of two or more nouns combined together, e.g., greenhouse, mother-in-law, ice cream.
As long as the compound noun represents one unified thing, they can be written as one word, as hyphenated words, or as separate words.
Collective nouns
Similarly, collective nouns refer to nouns that are used to identify a group of people, animals, or things, e.g., a team (of developers), a herd (of sheep), a cluster (of coconuts).
How to make nouns plural
Most nouns in English become plural by adding -s or -es. For example, one tree becomes two trees and one bush becomes two bushes.
The general rule of thumb is to add -s at the end to make a noun plural, unless the word ends in “s,” “x,” “z,” “ch” or “sh,” in which case you add an “es.” For example:
mess → messes
box → boxes
patch → patches
If the “ch” ending is pronounced with a /k/ sound, add “s” instead of “es.” For example:
monarch → monarchs
stomach → stomachs
epoch → epochs
If the word ends in a
baby → babies
daisy → daisies
candy → candies
However, English has many irregular plural nouns that do not follow this rule. The easiest way to remember these irregular plural nouns is to memorize them, but there are some patterns you can look out for. Some of these patterns are listed below.
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