Noun Type Examples

Common Nouns name people, man, mountain, state, ocean, country, building, cat,
places or things that are not specific. airline

Walt Disney, Mount Kilimanjaro, Minnesota, Atlantic

Proper Nouns name specific
Ocean, Australia, Empire State Building, Fluffy, Sun
people, places, or things.
Country

Abstract Nouns name nouns that

love, wealth, happiness, pride, fear, religion, belief,
you can't perceive with your five
history, communication
sense.

Concrete Nouns name nouns that

house, ocean, Uncle Mike, bird, photograph, banana,
you can perceive with your five
eyes, light, sun, dog, suitcase, flowers
senses.

Countable Nouns name nouns that bed, cat, movie, train, country, book, phone, match,
you can count. speaker, clock, pen, David, violin

Uncountalbe Nouns name nouns

milk, rice, snow, rain, water, food, music
that you can't count.

Compound Nouns are made up of tablecloth, eyeglasses, New York, photograph,

two or more words. daughter-in-law, pigtails, sunlight, snowflake

Collective Nouns refer to things or bunch, audience, flock, team, group, family, band,
people as a unit. village

Singular Nouns name one person,

cat, sock, ship, hero, monkey, baby, match
place, thing, or idea.

Plural Nouns name more than one

cats, socks, ships, heroes, monkeys, babies, matches
person, place, thing, or idea.

Possessive Nouns show ownership. Mom's car, Beth's cat, the student's book

Nouns + Sentence Diagrams = Awesomeness

Seeing a list of nouns is a great way to learn what a noun is.

Sentence diagramming can teach you what a noun does.

Sentence diagramming is a visual way to show how the words in a sentence are related to
each other.

Since nouns can do many things in a sentence, the way they are diagrammed depends on the
way that they are acting in each sentence.

Here is a diagram of the following noun jobs: subject, direct object, indirect object, and
object of the preposition.

A noun is a part of speech that identifies a person, place, thing, or idea. In this lesson, in addition to
learning how to identify nouns, you'll learn the difference between proper and common nouns and a
bit about how nouns function in sentences.

What Are Nouns?

You probably remember learning about nouns at some point, but you may be hard-pressed to
explain what they are. Nouns are incredibly important in spoken and written language, but the
good news is that they're also pretty easy to understand. Figuring out the basics of how nouns
operate in sentences will help you learn lots of other more complex rules down the road.

Definition of Nouns

A noun is a part of speech, and parts of speech simply refer to types of words. You may be
familiar with a lot of basic parts of speech, like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Nouns identify
people, places, things, and ideas. Nouns can be categorized as either common or proper.
Common nouns name general people, places, things, and ideas, while proper nouns name
specific people, places, things, and ideas. For example, examples of nouns naming people
would be:

Common Noun Proper Noun

president Barack Obama

teacher Mrs. Sanders

brother Joe

In our first column, we have general, or common, nouns. In our second column, we have
specific, or proper, nouns. Note that typically, the first letter in a common noun isn't
capitalized unless that common noun is the first word in a sentence. The first letter in a proper
noun is typically capitalized.

Nouns also identify places. Common nouns naming places include 'hometown,' 'country,' and
'airport.' Corresponding specific, proper nouns would include 'Cincinnati,' 'Argentina,' and
'Hartsfield International Airport.'

Nouns identifying things include 'space shuttle,' 'movie,' and 'cartoon.' Those are common
nouns, and proper nouns that correspond with them to name particular things would include
'Challenger,' 'The Godfather,' and 'The Simpsons.' Nouns identifying ideas include 'joy,'
'boredom,' and 'liberty.' So, now that nouns may be a bit more familiar, you can no doubt
guess that they are very, very common in sentences.

Nouns in Sentences

A key thing to remember about nouns is that every sentence needs to have one to be
complete. Some sentences have pronouns instead of nouns. We'll get more into that in
another lesson.

Nouns perform and often receive the actions being performed in sentences, and they play
other roles in sentences, too. Without nouns, we'd end up with incomplete sentence fragments
like, 'walks around' or 'stomped on.'

Nouns are simply the names we give to everything around us, whether it be a person, an
event, a place or an object, etc. Every particular name used to define something is a noun.
E.g. : Amsterdam, Anita, Blackberry, Honesty, Waiter, etc.

The names given to a group of noun to identify them as a whole are called Collective Nouns.
E.g.: pride of lions, gaggle of geese etc.

Nouns or pronouns can also modify themselves to show possession of another noun, usually
by attaching 's' to the end of the noun. These nouns that show possession are called
Possessive Nouns.

Sometimes nouns have different forms for different genders, although this practice has been
largely abandoned by the people who prefer to use the same noun for both genders. For
example - Actor (male) - Actress (female), but people nowadays refer to women who act as
female actors rather than actresses.

Most nouns can be converted into plural forms by adding ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ at the end of the word.
E.g.: box-boxes, cat-cats, echo-echoes , etc.

But some nouns require the last consonant to be modified before adding ‘-es’. For example:
the ‘Y’ in ‘city’ changes to ‘I’ to form cities, kitty to kitties and ‘f’ to ‘v’ in dwarf to dwarves,
wharf to wharves, etc.

Some nouns become plurals irregularly by changing the entire word: mouse- mice, ox - oxen,
etc.

You can learn more about Plurals here: How to make Plurals : Making Plurals-Easy Guide

Grammarians have divided nouns into different categories based on their use and purpose.
Learning these divisions within the nouns will help in sentence construction and vocabulary.
The different types of Nouns are -

PROPER NOUNS

These nouns are the names of specific people and places. These nouns also refer to the names
of the days of weeks and months, and also the various names for religions, organizations,
institutions, etc. Proper nouns basically refer to the names that are specific to that particular
noun. These nouns are always capitalised as they need to be distinct from other nouns.

 William Shakespeare was a playwright. - Proper noun that is the name of a specific person.
 I will be visiting New York next month. - Proper noun that is the name of a specific place.
 Everyone dislikes Monday mornings. - The names of days are proper nouns.
 The holy book of Islam is the Koran. - Name of a religion and religious text.

COMMON NOUNS

These are the nouns that are used to denote a general category of people, places or things.
They are capitalized only when they are at the beginning of a sentence. Common Nouns don’t
refer to something specific rather they are a general term used for every noun of a particular
kind or type.

 The boys went to play cricket. - Both boys and cricket are common nouns as they can refer
to any boy or any cricket match. There is nothing specified by these nouns.
 This neighbourhood is one of the best in the area. - Here neighbourhood is the common
noun as there are innumerable neighbourhoods all over the world.
 She was trying to answer her phone while buying coffee. - Here we see phone and coffee
that both are general indicators of the object and the drink.

ABSTRACT NOUNS

These nouns are the names of things that we cannot perceive through our five senses of
touching, smelling, seeing, hearing and tasting. These nouns can also refer to medical
conditions related to the mind and are also used to express thoughts.

 She screamed with great delight. - Delight is an abstract noun as it tells about the state of a
person’s mind and any actual physical thing.
 His bravery in the war won him a medal. - The abstract noun bravery is used to name the
motivation behind certain actions made by people.
 One should learn to be as independent as possible. – Here, independent describes a state or
a way of being, hence it is an abstract noun.

COUNTABLE NOUNS

The nouns that fall under this category are the ones that have both singular and plural forms.
They can be counted either relatively or completely, and form plurals to associate with plural
verbs in a sentence. They can also be expressed in numerical terms

 I need to buy four new suitcases for my trip. - Suitcase (s) is a countable noun as adding ‘s’
to it makes it plural.
 Does anyone want some oranges? - Here some is being used to count the noun orange(s).
 She had a pet dog. - Dog is also a countable noun as its plural is dogs.

UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS
These nouns are the exact opposite of Countable Nouns. These nouns are the names of things
that cannot be counted and have only a singular form. These nouns use singular verbs in a
sentence.

 The furniture was damaged in moving out. - Furniture is an uncountable noun and
therefore, we use the singular ‘was’ in referring to it.
 Is 250gms of sugar enough? - Here, sugar is an uncountable noun as sugar itself cannot be
counted. It can only be weighed.
 He always answers questions with honesty. - Honesty is an uncountable noun as it has no
plural and cannot be counted in physical terms either.

Nouns Exercise 1

List of Nouns, Noun Examples

Actor Doctor Helmet Match Rose

Advertisement Dog Holiday Microphone Russia

Afternoon Dream Honey Monkey Sandwich

Airport Dress Horse Morning School

Ambulance Easter Hospital Motorcycle Scooter

Animal Egg House Nail Shampoo

Answer Eggplant Hydrogen Napkin Shoe

Apple Egypt Ice Needle Soccer

Army Elephant Insect Nest Spoon

Australia Energy Insurance Nigeria Stone

Balloon Engine Iron Night Sugar

Banana England Island Notebook Sweden

Battery Evening Jackal Ocean Teacher

Beach Eye Jelly Oil Telephone

Beard Family Jewellery Orange Television

Bed Finland Jordan Oxygen Tent

Belgium Fish Juice Oyster Thailand

Boy Flag Kangaroo Painting Tomato

Branch Flower King Parrot Toothbrush

Breakfast Football Kitchen Pencil Traffic

Brother Forest Kite Piano Train

Camera Fountain Knife Pillow Truck

Candle France Lamp Pizza Uganda

Car Furniture Lawyer Planet Umbrella

Caravan Garage Leather Plastic Van

Carpet Garden Library Portugal Vase

Cartoon Gas Lighter Potato Vegetable

China Ghost Lion Queen Vulture

Church Girl Lizard Quill Wall

Crayon Glass Lock Rain Whale

Crowd Gold London Rainbow Window

Daughter Grass Lunch Raincoat Wire

Death Greece Machine Refrigerator Xylophone

Denmark Guitar Magazine Restaurant Yacht

Diamond Hair Magician River Yak

Dinner Hamburger Manchester Rocket Zebra

Disease Helicopter Market Room Zoo