Types of Nouns
You know by now that a noun is a word - a word that is a person,
place, thing, or idea. Let's take a closer look at nouns and the
different types of ways we can describe them! Are you ready?
Common Nouns vs. Proper Nouns

Nouns can be further broken down into common nouns and proper
nouns.
Common nouns names general items. Common nouns
are not capitalized, unless they are at the beginning of a sentence
or part of a title.
Proper nouns are names given to a specific person,
place or thing. Proper nouns are always capitalized
See the table below for some examples
| Common Noun |
Proper Noun |
| country |
United States |
| coffee shop |
Starbucks |
| car |
Honda Civic |
| man |
Barack Obama |
| lunch |
McDonald's |
| amusement park |
Disney World |
| cartoon |
Bugs Bunny |
| city |
London |
| jeans |
Levi's |
| building |
White House |
Let's take a look at some examples in sentence form.
I live in a country called Canada.
(country - common, Canada - proper)
Out of all the coffee shops in the
neighbourhood, my favourite is the Starbucks coffee shop on Queen
Street.
(coffee shops - common, Starbucks - proper, Queen
Street - proper)
Barack Obama, the White House, and Bugs Bunny are all
examples of proper nouns.
Are you an expert on common nouns and proper nouns now?
Take this quiz
Concrete Nouns vs. Abstract Nouns%
Now that you're familiar with common and proper nouns, let's
look at another way we can classify nouns - concrete and
abstract!
Concrete nouns are words that represent objects
you can experience in the real world with your five senses - what
you see, hear, touch, smell or taste.
Abstract nouns is something intangible. You
can't really see, hear, touch, smell or taste it. An abstract noun
can be an aspect, concept, idea, experience, state of being, trait,
quality, feeling, or other entity that cannot be experienced with
your five senses.
How do I recognize an abstract noun?

To make sure something abstract is noun, check to see if you can
place "a" or "the" before.
For example, you can say "I love my wife" - but
in this case "love" is not a noun, it's a verb.
If you say "This is a love that will last forever", then love is
an abstract noun.
Common abstract nouns
Emotions/feelings: love, hate, anger, peace,
pride, sympathy
States/attributes: bravery, honesty, loyalty,
integrity, compassion, courage, courage, deceit, beauty, skill,
misery
Ideas/concepts: dreams, justice, liberty, freedom,
life, truth, knowledge, information, culture, trust
Movements/events: education, hospitality,
friendships.
Another great tip
Abstract nouns are very common. A lot of abstract nouns are
derived from alterations of the root word, or from adding a suffix.
For example, "child" is a concrete noun (a person is an idiot),
while "childhood" is an abstract noun (because it's an intangible
state). Here are some suffixes usually used in abstract nouns:
- -tion
- -ism
- -ity
- -ment
- -ness
- -age
- -ance/-ence
- -ship
- -ability
- -acy
Count Nouns, Mass Nouns, and Collective Nouns
This concept is a bit more tricky! Check out our explanations
below.
Count Nouns
Count nouns refer to any types of nouns that
can be counted. They have singular and plural forms. They are the
most common types of nouns you will encounter.
e.g. cars, apples, buses, bananas

Mass Nouns
Mass nouns refer to things that cannot be
counted. You don't really refer to these plural objects as separate
entities. Rather, you think of it as one. For example, how exactly
do describe a lot of money? You cannot say "moneys"! They do not
usually have a plural form.
Examples:
- advice, air, blood, equipment, food, garbage, graffiti
- grass, homework, housework, information, knowledge,
luggage
- mathematics, meat, milk, money, music, pollution
- research, sand, soap, software, sugar, time, traffic
- transportation, travel, trash, water
Exceptions:
Some nouns may permit treatment as either count or mass nouns -
that is, sometimes there are situations where you may add plural
form to these mass nouns.
One example is salad: you can say "much salad", "a lot of salad"
- this is using salad as a mass noun. Or you can use it as a count
noun, "many salads", "kinds of salads".
Collective Nouns
Collective nouns defines groups of
objects. Collective nouns can be counted; therefore, they have
plural forms.

Examples of Collective Nouns:
- A herd of sheep
- A rainbow of butterflies
- A swarm of flies
- A gang of thugs
- A cast of actors
- A company of soldiers
- A fleet of ships
- A pack of wolves
Note that in all of these above instances, these words are
describing groups of things.
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