Nouns

Tutorial

Nouns

There are FOUR KINDS OF NOUNS –

A COMMON NOUN

refers to any one of a number of things of the same kind, such as as: “man”, “country”, “lake” or “cloud”. “Common” comes from a Latin word meaning “shared by several”.

is a name for one particular thing. “Proper” comes from a Latin word meaning “own”. (Think of property; somebody owns the property.) Thus a Proper noun can be given to only one thing at a time; it is an owned name. A Proper noun begins with a capital letter, as “John”, “Australia”.

A COLLECTIVE NOUN

is a name for a group of similar things, the group forming one complete whole. Example: “There are many sheep in the field but there is only one flock of sheep.” In this sentence sheep is a Common noun, because it may stand for any one and every one sheep, but flock is a Collective noun, as it stands for all the sheep at once, and not for any one sheep on its own.

An ABSTRACT NOUN

is the name given to something which has no substance, that is, to something which cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. Examples are “poverty”, “humility”, “goodness”, “laughter” and “hardness”.

We know that a stone is hard. We know that iron is hard. We know that a brick is hard. We can speak of hardness as being a quality apart from the stone, the iron, and the brick, or any other object having the same quality. We can put our hands on the stone, the iron and the brick,, but there is nothing to see or touch when we think of hardness. We can go to the store and buy some stones or bricks or iron, but we cannot buy any hardness as it does not exist. We can think of stones and iron and bricks as having substance, whereas hardness has no substance. So, hardness is called an abstract noun.

Other examples are: childhood, kingship, service, sight, fear, hope - and so on

The following words are all nouns, as they refer to the names of PERSONS:

Tom. Dick. Harry, Jenny, Joan, Jean, Kenneth, William, Thomas, Ronald, Rita, Reg.

These nouns all begin with a capital letter, which shows they are owned by somebody; they refer to a particular person, not just to anyone in general.

Words such as man, woman, boy, girl, lad, lass, child, baby, person, people, are also nouns, but they are not owned by any particular person; the names are common to many people. So these words are all common nouns.

Note especially that the names are words, not persons. It is the words that are nouns, not the persons.

The following words are all nouns as they refer to the names of PLACES:

Perth, Adelaide, Midland, Stratton, Australia, Holland, England, America, Timor.

Note that these nouns all begin with a capital letter. This indicates that they are all owned names. So they are all Proper nouns.

But words such as river, mountain, lake, road, street, town, country, village, city are names that belong to any number of such things, or places; they are common to many things. So they are all called Common nouns.

Words such as hill, tree, river, bank, house, table, chair, knife, spoon, eggs, hens, bed, cat, dog, are all nouns as they are the names of THINGS. These names are common to a great many such things, so they are called Common nouns.

But names such as Swan River, Commonwealth Bank, Mount Everest, Morrison Road, are Proper nouns, as the names refer to particular things; they are owned names.

The following words are all nouns because they refer to the names of THINGS.

They are all nouns; each one names something: chair, table, dishes, computer, knife, meal, car, dog, garden, cloud, flower, tree. These names are all called Common nouns.

EXERCISE

1. Read through the following paragraph. Then underline the nouns. (There are 15 nouns altogether.)

Once upon a time, Hans Hannekemaaier, with a scythe on his back, came into the land near Edam Town where they make cheeses. How he stared his eyes out! The meadows were so lush and green, and the cows so big, The farmers, long pipes in their mouths, were strolling about the fields with a lordly air.

Now make a list of all the nouns and beside each one write what kind of a noun it is – Common noun, (Common nouns are everywhere, and you use them all the time, even if you don’t realize it. Wherever you go, you’ll find at least one common noun. Street, closet, bathroom, school, mall, gas station; all of these places are named using common nouns).

People in general are named using common nouns, though their official titles or given names are proper nouns. When we refer to people using common nouns, we use words like teacher, clerk, police officer, preacher, delivery driver, boyfriend, girlfriend, grandma, cousin, and barista.

Collective nouns You might not know it, but you encounter collective nouns in everyday speech. Collective nouns are words for single things that are made up of more than one person, animal, place, thing, or idea. You can’t have a team without individual members; even so, we discuss a team as a single entity.

http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/nouns/collective-nouns/

Abstract nouns are words that name things that are not concrete. Your five physical senses cannot detect an abstract noun – you can’t see it, smell it, taste it, hear it, or touch it. In essence, an abstract noun is a quality, a concept, an idea, or maybe even an event.

Abstract nouns and concrete nouns are usually defined in terms of one another. Something that is abstract exists only in the mind, while something that is concrete can be interacted with in a physical way. Qualities, relationships, theories, conditions, and states of being are some examples of the types of things abstract nouns define.

http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/nouns/abstract-nouns/

Proper noun, Collective noun or Abstract noun.

Two of the nouns are worked for you.

Noun Kind of Noun

1. time Abstract noun

2. Hans Hannekemaaier Proper noun

Examples of Nouns

Abstract Nouns – name things you can’t perceive with your five senses

advice	anger	belief	bigotry
communication	compassion	darkness	death
fear	freedom	friendship	gratitude
happiness	hatred	help	heroism
history	honesty	hope	infancy
jealousy	knowledge	life	love
loyalty	manhood	misery	peace
pride	poverty	power	promise
reality	redemption	regret	religion
troupe	trust	wealth	wisdom

Collective Nouns – a group of people or things

army	audience	band	bevy
bouquet	brood	bunch	caravan
cartload	choir	clan	colony
congregation	corps	drove	family
flock	gaggle	gang	group
herd	jury	mob	pack
panel	range	regiment	school
squadron	swarm	team	village

Compound Nouns – made up of two or more words

aftermath	anyone	blackboard	board of directors
bodyguard	court-martial	daughter-in-law	earthworm
eyeglasses	father-in-law	forget-me-not	grandfather
grasshopper	homemade	inside	jellyfish
jigsaw	keyboard	kneecap	lifetime
moonlight	mother-in-law	New York	overthrow
paperclip	photograph	pickpocket	pigtails
plaything	quicksand	railroad	rattlesnake
somewhere	snowflake	sunlight	tablecloth
upstream	uplift	wheelchair	windpipe

Countable Concrete Nouns – can be perceived with your five senses and can be counted

aardvark	banana	bed	bird
book	cat	clock	cookie
country	dog	eyes	flowers
house	light	match	movie
ocean	panther	pen	phone
photograph	planet	rain	speaker
sun	suitcase	sunset	train
ukulele	violin	walnuts	xylophone

Uncountable Concrete Nouns – cannot be counted

air	beer	blood	butter
cheese	clutter	currency	economics
electricity	flour	food	garbage
gas	ground	homework	honey
information	insurance	juice	lightning
milk	mud	music	news
rain	rice	sand	snow
timber	water	weather	wood

Verbal Nouns (Gerunds) – refer to actions

acting	asking	boating	bowling
camping	climbing	crawling	dancing
deceiving	destroying	eating	fishing
flying	golfing	growing	hiking
hopping	hunting	hurting	inserting
jogging	jumping	kayaking	living
making	moaning	naming	opening
painting	parasailing	placing	plotting
questioning	razing	rollerblading	rolling
running	shopping	skiing	smoking
snorkeling	surfing	swimming	talking
traveling	watching	watering	yodeling

Proper Nouns – name a particular person, place or thing

Africa	Atlantic Ocean	Australia	Beethoven
Big Ben	Chile	Clark Gable	Conoco
Disneyland	Elizabeth Taylor	Fluffy	Halley’s Comet
Honda	January	Jupiter	King Tut
Lake Eerie	La-Z-Boy	Minnesota	Michael
Minnesota	Mount Everest	Nelson Mandela	Notre Dame
Peking	Quebec	Rio Grande	Rocky Mountains
September	Stanford University	Starbucks	Susan
The New York Times	The Tower of London	Uncle George	United Nations
United States	Vincent van Gogh	Xerox	Zeus

resources

For those students that presented work on English we gathered a lot of useful reference information that became a STUDENT's COMPENDIUM here are some samples of student work

Please note there are some excellent links to assist with these pages

see at the end for the links for further information.