Noun examples

Examples of nouns come in a wide variety of lengths, some of them familiar and others bizarre to the eye or ear. They can often be identified by the roles they play in the sentences we use, even if as a word their meaning is obscure (behalf, for example?). They can be classified and organised along a few different lines, which will be listed below with examples of each.

One such division is between proper nouns and common nouns, which can be told apart because proper nouns start with capital letters (Mount Everest) and common nouns do not (mountain).

Concrete nouns name every item and entity that you can experience with the five physical senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, sound), whereas abstract nouns describe those states, emotions, entities, etc. that cannot be sensed the same way.

Possessive nouns demonstrate a connection between nouns with the addition of an apostrophe and s at the end: for example, (the) cat’s (pyjamas).

Collective nouns, like team and flock, are single words that represents a collection of individual nouns, like players or seagulls. Uncountable or mass nouns are words that cannot be made plural (like gas or fruit), whereas countable nouns can (canisters, vegetables).

Compound nouns are words formed by the combination of other, existing words (sundown, chequebook, lady-in-waiting). Noun phrases are combinations of words that are treated as one word within a sentence: for example, the holiday I spent in Wales in 1986.

Noun examples