Nouns

Before digging into the definition of a noun, allow me to be pedantic. I want to address two other definitions for nouns that you A) have probably heard, and B) are WRONG:

A noun is a person, place, or thing = WRONG: While technically true, this definition is too vague. There are two types of things: objects (which are tangible things) and concepts (which are intangible things).

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea = WRONG: This is still too vague and inaccurate. An idea by definition exists in the minds of people yet not the real world. This does not describe several nouns, such as time and war: while these nouns are intangible and only defined by human perception, they are undoubtedly real and have real consequences. In fact, an idea is one of three types of concepts:
- Ideas: intangible perceptions or beliefs (good, evil, democracy, equality, Judaism)
- States: how something exists (state of war, state of emergency, state of existence)
- Emotions: how someone is feeling (joy, trust, fear, sadness, anger)
- Qualities: distinctive attributes (courage, honesty, credibility, decency)

Thus, the most accurate definition for a noun is...

A noun is a person, place, object, or concept (ideas, states, emotions, and qualities).

In a sentence, nouns function as subjects, direct objects, appositives, indirect objects, subject and object complements, and the objects of phrases. Nouns can be classified in three ways in English: by case, by title, and by number.

Classifying by case

Nouns fulfill one of five roles in a sentence, known as cases:

Nominative nouns are nouns that act as subjects in a clause (Darren kicked the ball, The long and winding road disappeared over the hill)
Accusative nouns are nouns that act as direct objects of a clause or phrase (Darren kicked the ball, I whistled at a donkey)
Dative nouns are nouns that act as indirect objects in a clause (Mary gave Cheyenne a present)
Possessive nouns are nouns that show ownership, usually by adding an ’s to the word (Mike's, the woman's, China's). If the word that is showing possession already ends in an s, the writer can choose to only add the apostrophe for simplicity's sake (the governess', the Joneses') or add 's (Chris's, Belarus's). Possessive nouns function as modifiers for other nouns.
Vocative nouns are nouns that directly address the intended audience of the statement (Kennedy, pay attention! I need you to sign here, ma'am.)

While most nouns clearly fall into one of these five cases, there are three instances where case can get confusing:

APPOSITIVES: The first has to do with appositives, which are nouns that rename the noun immediately before it to add clarity. In My dog Smuckers likes treats, the word Smuckers is the appositive of dog, as they mean the same thing. Occasionally, modifiers are added to an appositive and it becomes an appositive phrase: Batman, the grim black-clad vigilante hero of Gotham City, owes me ten bucks. In this instance, the noun hero is the appositive of Batman with everything else in the phrase modifying that one word. Regardless if it is by itself or in a phrase, the appositive will match the case of the word it renames. Since friend is nominative in My friend Cody lent me his car, the appositive Cody is nominative. Since friend is accusative in I hugged my friend Cody, the appositive Cody is accusative this time.

PREDICATE NOMINATIVE: Nouns can also be renamed by other nouns if one noun is the subject and the other noun is a predicate complement (also known as a subject complement). Predicate complements follow linking verbs: in Sandra was very pretty, pretty is a predicate adjective that describes Sandra even though the adjective doesn't come before the noun like usual. Similarly, we could say Sandra was the president, but in this case, president is not modifying the subject but renaming it, much like the appositive. This is called a predicate nominative, and as implied by the name, is always in the nominative case.

OBJECT COMPLEMENTS: Just as subjects can have complements, there also exist object complements that describe or rename the object immediately before it. In I now pronounce you husband and wife, the words husband and wife are object compliments that shows what you are now (as opposed to being an appositive, which is completely unrelated to the verb). Since you is in the accusative case, object complements are always accusative and are sometimes called predicate accusatives.

Classifying by title

Most nouns are common nouns that are generic and not specific. These are nouns like boy (person), park (place), chair (object), and love (concept).

Some other nouns are specific and have specific names: these are proper nouns and are always capitalized. Examples of proper nouns are Abraham Lincoln (person), Cincinnati (place), Honda Civic (object), and Wednesday (concept).

Classifying by number (plurality)

Since nouns are items, they can be expressed in amounts greater than one. This is called plurality. All nouns break down into three types of nouns when it comes to plurality: count nouns, noncount nouns, and collective nouns:

COUNT NOUNS: nouns that can be easily counted and can thus be pluralized by adding a suffix (see below)
NONCOUNT NOUNS: nouns that can’t be counted, like jeans, lightning, homework, air, or dirt. These words cannot be pluralized by adding a suffix (jeanses, lightnings, homeworks, airs, dirts)-- instead, they need a pluralized unit that can be counted to be added before the noun (pairs of jeans, bolts of lightning, pages of homework, cubic centimeters of air, clumps of dirt).
COLLECTIVE NOUNS: a group made of many members that is considered a singular and not plural entity (e.g. audience, crowd, mob). Collective nouns can be pluralized with a suffix (audiences agree, crowds pay) or be broken into units like noncount nouns (members of the audience, voices of the crowd), though each creates a different meaning.

How to Pluralize Nouns in American English

First, remember that only count nouns and collective nouns can be pluralized.

When pluralizing a noun with a suffix, a regular noun is pluralized by adding an -s to the end: car, cars; friend, friends; dog, dogs

If the noun already ends in an s, or ends in a ch, sh, x, or z, the word is pluralized with an -es at the end: bus, buses; peach, peaches; dash, dashes; ex, exes; blintz, blintzes

EXCEPTION: Only add an -s if the -ch sounds like k like in the words monarch, monarchs; conch, conchs; epoch, epochs

If the noun ends in y, look at the previous letter:

If the previous letter is a vowel, just add an -s to the end: day, days; boy, boys; lackey, lackeys
If the previous letter is a consonant, then the writer needs to drop the y and add an -ies to the end: cherry, cherries; spy, spies; philosophy, philosophies

If the noun ends in o, look at the previous letter:

If the previous letter is a vowel, just add an -s to the end: zoo, zoos; portfolio, portfolios; video, videos
If the previous letter is a consonant, then add an -es to the end: potato, potatoes; hero, heroes; banjo, banjoes

If the noun ends in -f or -fe, look at the previous letter:

If the previous letter is an f--meaning the words end in -ff or -ffe--add the normal -s to the end: puff, puffs; giraffe, giraffes; sheriff, sheriffs

If the word ends in -ife and is not the word fife or strife, then the writer needs to drop the -fe and add an -ves to the end: knife, knives; life, lives; wife, wives

If the word ends in -fe but not -ife, add the normal -s to the end: cafe, cafes; safe, safes

If the word ends in -f and a writer doesn't know how to pluralize the word, they must look up in a dictionary. whether they need to drop the -f and add -ves or to add the normal -s to the end. There is no consistent rule in English when it comes to -f: despite having the same ending letters and sound, oaf becomes oafs but loaf becomes loaves; belief becomes beliefs but thief becomes thieves; proof becomes proofs but hoof becomes hooves.

For compound nouns made of nouns plus other parts of speech, pluralize the noun wherever it is in the compound: attorney general, attorneys general; editor-in-chief, editors-in-chief; sister-in-law, sisters-in-law; passerby, passersby; forget-me-not, forget-me-nots

Any words that cannot be pluralized in these ways is an irregular noun, and cannot be pluralized in a normal fashion because the word is foreign in origin. This includes words of Latin origin (medium, media; cactus, cacti; matrix, matrices), Greek origin (criterion, criteria; analysis, analyses; octopus, octopi), German origin (child, children; goose, geese; mouse, mice), Italian origin (antenna, antennae; paparazzo, paparazzi; larva, larvae), and originating from the various Native American languages (moose, moose; squash, squash; yuca, yuca). Though some words have more recently followed standard pluralization rules (antennas, cactuses, and octopuses are all now acceptable plurals), these irregular foreign words that follow the pluralization of their original language still crop up.

Note that, when shifting subject verb agreement, pluralization can shift from the noun to the verb (Dogs run vs dog runs). Verbs use the same pluralization rules as nouns do: swim, swims; bypass, bypasses; push, pushes; preach, preaches; fix, fixes; buzz, buzzes; slay, slays; try, tries; boo, boos; echo, echoes; scoff, scoffs.

EXCEPTION: Unlike nouns, where some ending in -f and -fe get the suffix -ves, the verb plural always ends in -s and never changes the ending to -ves: the criminal saw the knives, the criminal knifes a victim; the dog ran from the wolves, the dog wolfs down his food

What about gender?

A common classification of nouns in many languages like Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Somali is gender: almost all nouns are masculine or feminine with the occasional neuter noun without gender. English, however, has no grammatical gender and doesn't classify words into genders. This isn't to say that there aren't some nouns that are masculine (king, duke, count, father, son, nephew, lord, sir) and feminine (queen, duchess, countess, mother, daughter, niece, lady, madam), but these are based around their definition and social context, not their grammar. For example, boats are often considered feminine by sailors who say things like She's a real beauty or She can run the route in twenty days, but this isn't a hard and fast rule nor does it determine the word's case, pluralization, or what articles it can accept.

Accepting articles

One other grammatical quirk separates nouns: the type of article that can precede it. Articles are small words that come before nouns to indicate information about a noun. In other languages, articles are their own part of speech (called determiners) and can indicate case, gender, and plurality -- in Spanish, for instance, el indicates a singular masculine noun, los a plural masculine noun, la a singular feminine noun, and las a plural feminine noun. There are only three articles in English: a, an, and the. These articles indicate if a noun is specific or general. If a noun is specific, then it is preceded by the (Pick up the glass over there). If the noun is general and one of many possible choices, it is preceded by a or an (Take a glass out of the cupboard). A is used when the word following it has consonant sound (a fish, a opossum, a shiny apple), while an is used when the word immediately after it starts with a vowel sound (an anchor, an hour, an untimely death). Articles are considered a type of adjective but have one unique feature: they must precede both the noun and all other adjectives the noun has.

Page last updated 25 March 2024.