What is Noun ?

 

Definition: “A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea.”

Concrete nouns name people, places, or things that you can touch, see, hear, smell, or taste.

Examples:

Person – man, Mrs. Jones, doctor, Maddie
Place – river, Paris, mountains, home
Thing – dog, book, sports car

Abstract nouns name ideas or emotions. They are intangible, which means you cannot touch, see, hear, smell, or taste them using your five senses.

Idea – love, intelligence, justice
Emotion – happiness, anger, excitement

Remember, pronouns are not nouns.

The problem with the simple definition above is that it does not explain why "love" is a noun but can also be a verb.

Another (more complicated) way of recognizing a noun is by its:

• ·       ending
• ·       position
• ·       function

1. Noun ending

There are certain word endings that show that a word is a noun, for example:

• ·       -ity → nationality
• ·       -ment → appointment
• ·       -ness → happiness
• ·       -ation → relation
• ·       -hood → childhood

But this is not true for the word endings of all nouns. For example, the noun "spoonful" ends in -ful, but the adjective "careful" also ends in -ful.

2. Position in sentence

We can often recognise a noun by its position in the sentence.

Nouns often come after a determiner (a determiner is a word like a, an, the, this, my, such):

• ·       a relief
• ·       an afternoon
• ·       the doctor
• ·       this word
• ·       my house
• ·       such stupidity
• 
  

Nouns often come after one or more adjectives:

• 
  
• ·       a great relief
• ·       a peaceful afternoon
• ·       the tall, Indian doctor
• ·       this difficult word
• ·       my brown and white house
• ·       such crass stupidity

3. Function in a sentence

• Nouns have certain functions (jobs) in a sentence, for example:
• subject of verb: Doctors work hard.
• object of verb: He likes coffee.
• subject and object of verb: Teachers teach students.
• But the subject or object of a sentence is not always a noun. It could be a pronoun or a phrase. In the sentence "My doctor works hard", the noun is "doctor" but the subject is "My doctor".