What is a noun?
A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing or idea, such as teacher, London, book or happiness. Nouns are one of the main parts of speech.
Common nouns name general things, like city, dog or river, and are not capitalized unless they start a sentence. Proper nouns name specific people, places or things, like Paris, Shakespeare or the Amazon, and are capitalized. Concrete nouns name things you can see or touch, while abstract nouns, like love, freedom and courage, name ideas and feelings.
Nouns can be countable, with singular and plural forms, like apple and apples, or uncountable, like water, information and advice. Collective nouns name groups, like team, family and flock. Nouns often act as the subject or object of a sentence.
Spotting nouns
A simple test is whether you can put a, an or the in front of a word. Nouns often end in suffixes like -tion, -ness, -ment and -ity, as in creation, kindness, movement and reality. In German, all nouns are capitalized, which makes them easy to identify.
Did You Know?
The word noun comes from the Latin nomen, meaning name.