NOUNS

A noun is a word or group of words that is the name of a person, a place, a thing, activity,
quality or idea.

Nouns can be used as the subject or the object of a verb.

To identify the subject, you ask yourself “who” is doing the action.

To identify the object, you ask yourself "what" is being affected by the action.

Nouns can either be countable or uncountable

Countable: Table, car, computer, building, apple, etc

Uncountable: Water, sky, music, art, sugar, etc.

Concrete and abstract nouns

Concrete nouns: Can be identified through one of the five senses

Abstract nouns: It denote an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object.

Common and proper nouns

Common nouns: Name general people, places or things.

Proper nouns: Name specific people, places or things.

Proper nouns regularly occurring with “the”

- Names of large regions, oceans, river

- Names of countries that use a plural form or contain the words “united” or “union”

- Names of ships

- Newspapers

- Names of buildings

- Names of companies that contain the words “company,” “corporation,” or “foundation.”

There are five classes of nouns:

- Collective nouns

Words we use to talk about a group of things, animals or people.

A group of birds, a flock of birds, a group of cookies, a batch of cookies, a group of cards, a
deck of cards.

A band of brothers, a gang of bandits, a Galaxy of stars, etc.

- Compound nouns

Is made up of two or more different words, creating a new noun.

Noun+noun “bedroom”

Noun+verb “haircut”

Verb+noun “washing machine”

verb+preposition “drawback”

Preposition+noun “underground”

Adjective+verb “dry-cleaning”

Adjective+noun “software”

- Unit nouns

These are countable nouns, which are usually followed by an of-phrase containing an
uncountable noun. Each unit noun has a specific meaning.

A bit of cake, a chunk of chocolate, a grain of sand, an ítem of cloth, a piece of cake, a
sheet of paper, etc.

A ball of paper, a sheet of paper, a fragment of paper, a piece of paper, a heap of paper,
etc.

- Quantifying nouns

A) Nouns for a type of container (Basket of, cup of, box of, etc)

B) Nouns for shape (heap of, pile of)

C) Measure nouns (Gallon, liter, meter, kilo)

D) Plural numeral nouns (Hundred, thousand, million, dozen)

E) Nouns for large quantities (load of, mass of)

F) Pair and couple

- Species nouns

These nouns refer to the type of something.

- “Type of…” “There are 30 types of energy.”

- “Sort of…” “He spoke of having some sort of flashback.”

- “Kind of…” “She is not the kind of person I thought.”

- “class of…” “More than one-fourth of the territory is made up of this class of
reliefs.”

- “Species of…” “Under these conditions certain species of bacteria break down the
waste to form methane gas.”

- “make of…” “The scheme covers any make of machine.”