Nouns are words that name a thing, or that denote a thing as a member of a class of similar things. English nouns may be substantive (having a physical and tangible referent, such as a person, place, or object), or they may be abstract (having a non-physical or intangible referent, such as an idea or abstraction). A proper noun is a special class of noun that names a particular thing. See Appendix:English proper nouns for more.
Many nouns in English have no ending that identifies them as nouns, but there are a number of suffixes common to nouns:
Nouns in English may be compound, where two nouns (or a noun and another word) have been combined to create a new noun. Such compounds may have the two components written together, with a hyphen, or with a space between them:
An English noun that refers to more than one thing is generally plural. Most English nouns form their plural by adding -s to the end of the word.
Nouns ending in soft -ch, -s, -sh, -x, or z in the singular add -es instead. A few English nouns retain plural endings inherited from their Old English form. Likewise, a number of words borrowed from Greek, Latin, or other languages have irregular plural forms borrowed from the original language:
Collective nouns, however, refer to a group of more than one thing but are usually treated as singular nouns. In some regions, collective nouns are treated as plural if the verb indicates an action that each member of the group takes.
Nouns may be countable or uncountable. A countable noun may be used with a numeral to indicate that there are several discrete instances of the object. An uncountable noun (also called a mass noun) refers to objects or substances that cannot be counted, or which are not normally counted. Not all countable nouns have a plural form that differs from the singular form, but uncountable nouns typically lack a plural form. Some nouns have both a countable and an uncountable meaning, depending on the context.
Some nouns are uncountable (also known as mass nouns), that is, they are not used in the plural. Many uncountable nouns denote substances (e.g. liquids, like water), actions (e.g. talking), conditions (e.g. happiness), or certain other abstractions (e.g. mathematics and descriptivism), which are difficult to separate into individual units. It is not always obvious from the referent, though, whether a noun is countable. For example, furniture is uncountable even though chair is countable. Many nouns have senses that are countable and other senses that are uncountable. In a restaurant, for example, one may order two waters, using a sense of water that means “a serving of water”. Entries in this dictionary for nouns with uncountable senses indicate the uncountable senses with the tag uncountable and the countable senses (if any) with the tag countable.
Almost every noun has a meaning that allows a plural. Even nouns that are mainly uncountable in everyday use often form plurals in discussions by specialists in the associated fields of business, trade, craft, or science. For example, although "cement" is uncountable in everyday speech, specialists may compare different "cements", meaning types, or instances, or samples, or "pours" of cement.
Some nouns are always, or almost always, found in a plural form. These are called plurale tantum (“always plural”):
Nouns in English do not have grammatical gender. However, some nouns have an implied gender that affects choice of pronoun used when referring to that noun.
Some English nouns have two gender forms, one with an ending that implies a masculine referent, and one with an ending that implies a feminine referent. The masculine form of some pairs may also be gender neutral:
A possessive form (a type of w:genitive construction) indicates that its referent possesses or owns an object or property. Most singular nouns form the possessive by adding 's. Most regular plural nouns just add an apostrophe ( ' ) to the existing s, but irregular plural nouns that don't end in s need to add both.
Most nouns can appear before another noun, modifying it in an adjectival manner, called attributive. The adjectival meaning is directly derived from the meaning of the noun. In attributive use the modifying noun, sometimes called a noun adjunct, is considered to remain a noun. A multiple-word noun phrase (a compound noun) is often written with hyphens instead of spaces to help the reader treat the phrase as a unit.
To determine that "amazon physique" contains a noun adjunct while "amazonian physique" contains an adjective, note these linguistic tests:
In English, attributive pseudo-adjectives are prepositive; that is, they precede the noun they modify.
Many words may function like a noun in a sentence. In the phrase, "the undead are coming", undead acts like a noun and in grammatical terms is called a "substantive". This can happen with almost any adjective. Here are some tests to determine if a word is actually a noun, or just acting like one:
A variety of suffixes can be added to nouns to form adjectives. These include -y, -al, and -like .
Informally, many nouns can be used as a verb (inflecting with endings such as -ed, -ing or prefixed with to), depending on the type of noun what the verb version means. In particular, a location implies to go to that location, an activity implies to do that activity - but the specific meaning can generally be determined from the context.
A noun phrase is a collection of words that functions together as a unit, with the noun identifying the core actor or recipient of the action. It may consist of a noun alone, or of a noun with one or more modifiers. The modifier may be an adjective, possessive, or a determiner (such as an article, numeral, or demonstrative). It may include a prepositional phrase or a clause that modifies the noun:
Noun phrases function as the subject of a sentence or clause, as the object of a verb or preposition, or as the addressee of a sentence:
Most English nouns may be used attributively (as if they were adjectives) to modify another noun:
Nouns used attributively usually precede the noun that they modify. The attributive use may either furnish a description (physical or of character) or provide information about the origin, composition, nature, or use of the following noun.
In many cases verbs, numerals, and other types of words have come to be nouns:
Adjectives, gerunds, and infinitives may be used as a noun or noun phrase:
In these cases the words do not always behave grammatically like nouns in every way. For example, gerunds can be modified by adverbs, but nouns cannot. Infinitives cannot form a plural, be modified by adjectives, or be objects of prepositions.
Clauses with both their own subject and verb can function in some of the same ways that nouns can.