A word or compound that refers to a person, thing, place, or abstract quality. 'Friend', 'credit card', 'California', and 'peace' are all nouns.
Types of Noun
1. Abstract noun
A common noun that refers to a quality, idea, or feeling rather than to a person or a physical object. For example 'thought', 'problem', 'law', and 'opportunity' are all abstract nouns.
2. Collective noun
A noun that refers to a group of people and is followed by a singular or plural verb, for example 'team' or 'family'.
3. Common noun
Any noun that is not the name of a specific person or thing. For example 'woman', 'dog', 'mountain', and 'idea' are common nouns, while 'Seema', 'Ram', and 'Mount Everest' 'Delhi' are proper nouns. The two types of common noun are concrete noun and abstract noun.
4. Concrete noun
A common noun that refers to anything with a physical reality that you can see or touch. For example 'hair', 'bread', 'rat' and 'mobile phone' are all concrete nouns.
5. Gerund
A noun formed by adding ' - ing' to a verb, that describes an action, such as 'running' or 'believing'.
6. Mass noun
A noun such as 'soap' that is usually uncountable but is also used with 'a' or 'an', or in the plural, to talk about different types of something. For example the noun 'soap' in 'Wash your hands with soap and water' is uncountable, while in 'You should choose a mild soap' and 'Some soaps are very strongly perfumed', 'soap' is countable. A mass noun is used in both these ways.
7. Proper noun
A noun that names a particular person, place, or thing and begins with a capital letter. 'Abhishek', 'Africa', and 'New Year' are proper nouns.
Nouns can be countable as well as uncountable:
i) Uncountable nouns usually refer to abstract things such as 'advice', 'luck', and 'information', or to substances such as 'milk', 'blood', and 'smoke'.
ii) Countable nouns are for things we can count using numbers. They have a singular and a plural form. The singular form can use the determiner "a" or "an".
Doubts on this article
