List of nouns

This page contains a list of nouns for illustrative purposes.

With the possible exception of verbs, nouns are probably the part of speech with which people are most familiar and most comfortable. It seems a simple concept: a word used to name things. However, nouns come in many different classifications – and one noun can be found within more than one of them. For example, dog is a concrete, common, countable noun, whereas Niagara Falls is a concrete, proper noun and guilt is an abstract, common, uncountable noun.

Below is a list of nouns that illustrates the various classifications.

Common nouns are not capitalised, which distinguishes them clearly from proper nouns, and represent a general group of entities (stars, lettuce, chainsaw), whereas proper nouns represent specific entities (Prince Charles, Ursa Major, Hadrian’s Wall).

Concrete nouns name the entities that can be experienced though the physical senses – smell, touch, etc.; abstract nouns name everything else.

Countable nouns are common nouns that can be combined with number values, like four lions or six of the best. Uncountable nouns on the other hand cannot be pluralised (grass, oxygen, sand).

Possessive nouns also operate in a straightforward manner, establishing the connection between two nouns with an apostrophe and an s.  For example, my cousin’s favourite guitar includes the possessive noun cousin’s.

Compound nouns are the result of two existing worlds being bound together, like typewriter. Collective nouns are single words introduced to represent a group of other words, such as company or swarm.

List of nouns