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A noun () is a
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.
[Example nouns for:
* ]Living creatures
In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and fungi; ...
(including people, alive, dead or imaginary): ''mushrooms, dogs, Afro-Caribbean
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...
s, rosebushes, Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...
, bacteria, Klingons
The Klingons ( ; Klingon language, Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a fictional species in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''.
Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the Star Trek: The Original Series, original ''Star Trek'' ('' ...
'', etc.
* Physical object
In common usage and classical mechanics, a physical object or physical body (or simply an object or body) is a collection of matter within a defined contiguous boundary in three-dimensional space. The boundary must be defined and identified by t ...
s: ''hammers, pencils, Earth, guitars, atoms, stones, boots, shadows'', etc.
* Places: ''closets, temples, rivers, Antarctica, houses, Grand Canyon, utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...
'', etc.
* Actions
Action may refer to:
* Action (narrative), a literary mode
* Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
* Action game, a genre of video game
Film
* Action film, a genre of film
* ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford
* ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
: ''swimming, exercises, diffusion
Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical p ...
s, explosions, flight, electrification, embezzlement'', etc.
* Qualities: ''colors, lengths, deafness, weights, roundness, symmetry, warp speed
The technology in ''Star Trek'' has borrowed many ideas from the scientific world. Episodes often contain technologies named after real-world scientific phenomena, such as tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum slipstream drives, and photon torp ...
,'' etc.
* Mental
Mental may refer to:
* of or relating to the mind
Films
* ''Mental'' (2012 film), an Australian comedy-drama
* ''Mental'' (2016 film), a Bangladeshi romantic-action movie
* ''Mental'', a 2008 documentary by Kazuhiro Soda
* ''Mental'', a 2014 O ...
or physical states of existence: ''jealousy, sleep, heat, joy, stomachache, confusion, mind meld
Vulcans, sometimes referred to as Vulcanians, are a fictional extraterrestrial humanoid species in the ''Star Trek'' universe and media franchise. In the various ''Star Trek'' television series and films, they are noted for their attempt to l ...
,'' etc.
Lexical categories (
parts of speech
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
) are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The
syntactic
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
rules for nouns differ between
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s. In
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, nouns are those words which can occur with
articles
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
and
attributive adjectives and can function as the
head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
of a
noun phrase. "As far as we know, every language makes a grammatical distinction that looks like a noun verb distinction."
History
Word classes (parts of speech) were described by
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. In
Yāska
Yāska was an ancient Indian grammarian and linguist st. 7th–5th century BCE(disputed)">disputed.html" ;"title="st. 7th–5th century BCE(disputed">st. 7th–5th century BCE(disputed) Preceding Pāṇini st. 7th–4th century BCE(Controv ...
's ''Nirukta'', the noun (''nāma'') is one of the four main categories of words defined.
[Bimal Krishna Matilal">Nirukta">st. 7th–4th century BCE(Controv ...]
's ''Nirukta'', the noun (''nāma'') is one of the four main categories of words defined.
[Bimal Krishna Matilal, ''The word and the world: India's contribution to the study of language'', 1990 (Chapter 3)]
The Ancient Greek equivalent was ''ónoma'' (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in the Cratylus (dialogue), ''Cratylus'' dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in ''The Art of Grammar'', attributed to
Dionysius Thrax
Dionysius Thrax ( grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the G ...
(2nd century BC). The term used in
Latin grammar
Latin is a heavily inflected languages, inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for grammatical number, number and grammatical case, case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, cas ...
was ''nōmen''. All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name". The English word ''noun'' is derived from the Latin term, through the
Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
*Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
*Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...
''noun''.
The word classes were defined partly by the grammatical
forms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
and inflected for
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
. Because
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s share these three
grammatical categories
In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...
, adjectives are placed in the same class as nouns.
Similarly, the Latin ''nōmen'' includes both nouns (substantives) and adjectives, as originally did the English word ''noun'', the two types being distinguished as ''nouns substantive'' and ''nouns adjective'' (or ''substantive nouns'' and ''adjective nouns'', or short ''substantives'' and ''adjectives''). (The word ''
nominal
Nominal may refer to:
Linguistics and grammar
* Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech
* Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement")
* Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb
* Nou ...
'' is now sometimes used to denote a class that includes both nouns and adjectives.)
Many European languages use a
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
of the word ''substantive'' as the basic term for ''noun'' (for example, Spanish ''sustantivo'', "noun"). Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviation ''s.'' or ''sb.'' instead of ''n.'', which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some modern authors use the word ''substantive'' to refer to a class that includes both nouns (single words) and
noun phrases (multiword units, also called noun equivalents).
It can also be used as a counterpart to ''attributive'' when distinguishing between a noun being used as the
head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
(main word) of a noun phrase and a noun being used as a
noun adjunct
In grammar, a noun adjunct, attributive noun, qualifying noun, noun (pre)modifier, or apposite noun is an optional noun that grammatical modifier, modifies another noun; functioning similarly to an adjective, it is, more specifically, a noun funct ...
. For example, the noun ''knee'' can be said to be used substantively in ''my knee hurts'', but attributively in ''the patient needed knee replacement''.
Examples
* The ''cat'' sat on the ''chair''.
* Please hand in your ''assignments'' by the ''end'' of the ''week''.
* ''Cleanliness'' is next to ''godliness''.
* ''Plato'' was an influential ''philosopher'' in ancient ''Greece''.
* Revel the ''night'', rob, murder, and commit/The oldest ''sins'' the newest ''kind'' of ''ways''? Henry IV Part 2, act 4 scene 5.
A noun can co-occur with an
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
or an
attributive adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the mai ...
. Verbs and adjectives cannot. In the following, an asterisk (*) in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical.
* ''the name'' (''name'' is a noun: can co-occur with a definite article ''the'')
* ''*the baptise'' (''baptise'' is a verb: cannot co-occur with a definite article)
* ''constant circulation'' (''circulation'' is a noun: can co-occur with the attributive adjective ''constant'')
* ''*constant circulate'' (''circulate'' is a verb: cannot co-occur with the attributive adjective ''constant'')
* ''a fright'' (''fright'' is a noun: can co-occur with the indefinite article ''a'')
* ''*an afraid'' (''afraid'' is an adjective: cannot co-occur with the article ''a'')
* ''terrible fright'' (the noun ''fright'' can co-occur with the adjective ''terrible'')
* ''*terrible afraid'' (the adjective ''afraid'' cannot co-occur wit