Nouns

During the 1970s, 80s and 90s, there was a famous TV program called Schoolhouse Rock. Most of us who grew up in North America at that time can still sing the songs; if you ask us what a noun is, we’ll sing, “It’s a person, place or thing, yeah!” A person, place or thing is probably the best definition for the word noun.

English is a noun-based language; it’s estimated that about 50% of the language is nouns. When children are learning to speak, they can say “Apple?” and we’ll know what they mean. This applies to most of our communication: if we have the noun, we can get the gist of any sentence, and the verbs, adjectives, etc. are merely extra bits for context. Because nouns are the main part of a sentence, all the other words work to describe that noun and what it’s doing – or what’s being done to it.

• What Are Nouns?
• Uses of Nouns
• Plural Nouns
• Types of Nouns
• Abstract Nouns
• Collective Nouns
• Common Nouns
• Concrete Nouns
• Generic Nouns
• Countable and Uncountable Nouns
• Possessive Nouns
• Proper Nouns
• Irregular Nouns
• Compound Nouns
• Noun Strings
• Nouns with Adjectives and Adverbs
• Noun and Pronoun Agreement: These/Those
• Countable and Uncountable Nouns with Adjectives
• Capitalization of Nouns