Noun

 NOUN

Noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea.

A noun is a word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.

A NOUN:

1.          1. She was an Opera singer.

2. The bus inspector looked at all the passenger’s passes.

Kinds of Nouns

Common Nouns

These are the nouns that are used to denote a general category of people, places or things. They are capitalized only when they are at the beginning of a sentence.

Common Nouns don’t refer to something specific rather they are a general term used for every noun of a particular kind or type.

Examples: The boys went to play cricket.

Proper Nouns

These nouns are the names of specific people and places. These nouns also refer to the names of the days and months, and also the various names for religions, organizations, institutions, etc.

Proper nouns basically refer to the names that are specific to that particular noun. These nouns are always capitalized as they need to be distinct from other nouns.

Examples:

William Shakespeare was a playwright.

 I will be visiting New York next month.

Abstract Nouns

These nouns are the names of things that we cannot perceive through our five senses of touching, smelling, seeing, hearing and tasting. These nouns can also refer to conditions related to the mind and are also used to express thoughts.

Example: She screamed with great delight.

His bravery in the war won him a medal.

Collective Nouns

Collective noun is the name we give to a group of nouns to refer to them as one entity. The most common method of doing this is by using words like group or bunch that can be applicable to most of the nouns in the language today. But there are some specific names given for certain groups of nouns to make things more interesting and funny.

These collective nouns are commonly used under the category of people.

A class of students.

An army of soldiers.

A choir of singers.

A crew of sailors.

A band of musicians.

The following collective nouns are used for animals.

An army of ants.

A flock of birds.

A school of fish.

A pride of lions.

A parliament of owls.

A murder of crows

The following collective nouns are used for things.

A group of islands.

A galaxy of stars.

A wad of notes.

A forest of trees.

A stack of wood.

Material Nouns

“Material Noun is the names of materials or substances out of which things are made. Ex: gold, iron, silver etc.”

This noun is especially called as material noun because nouns in this class are almost materials like cloth, air, metal, gold, salt, iron, silver, steel, brass, bronze, copper, aluminum, lead, coal, coral, gem, diamond, glass, fiber, calcium, plastic, rubber, paper, cement, paint, plywood, synthetics, shampoo, soap, tar, chemical, Rexene etc.

Here are some examples:

Cotton dresses are very cheap and comfortable.

My mom purchased a gold ring for me.

My father has a shop for diamonds.

Plastic is made up of many molecules of ethylene.

There are many utensils in my kitchen made up of iron.

Taj Mahal is built using marbles.

Most of the industries use fibre.

In the ancient time, most of the kitchen utensils were made up of brass.

Countable Nouns

The nouns that fall under this category are the ones that have both singular and plural forms. They can be counted either relatively or completely, and form plurals to associate with plural verbs in a sentence. They can also be expressed in numerical terms.

Example: I need to buy four new suitcases for my trip.

Does anyone want some oranges?

(Here, some is being used to count the noun orange(s).)

Uncountable Nouns

These nouns are the exact opposite of Countable Nouns. These nouns are the names of things that cannot be counted and have only a singular form. These nouns use singular verbs in a sentence.

Example: The furniture was damaged in moving out.

He always answers questions with honesty.

Possessive Nouns

Possessive nouns are those nouns that show possession. Possessive Nouns are used to show ownership. A noun is possessive only when a phrase can be modified to say that an idea or commodity belongs to something or someone

Example: Ram’s car is in the garage. (Car belonging to Ron is in the garage)

Rule 1: In singular nouns (person, place, thing or idea), we add apostrophe and ‘s’ after the noun.

Example: Ron’s car is in the garage. (Car belonging to Ron is in the garage)

Rule 2: In singular nouns ending with‘s’, we add an apostrophe and‘s’ to the noun.

Example: Tejas’s notebook is lying on the table.

(Notebook of Tejas is lying on the table)

Rule 3: In plural nouns (ending with ‘s’), we add apostrophe after ‘s’.

Example: Students’ report cards are ready.