Nouns

It is not easy to describe a noun. In simple terms, nouns are "things" (and verbs are "actions"). Likefood. Food (noun) is something you eat (verb). Or happiness. Happiness (noun) is something you want (verb). Or human being. A human being (noun) is something you are (verb).

'But what are nouns?

The simple definition is: a person, place or thing.

Here are some examples:

person: man, woman, teacher, John, Mary
place: home, office, town, countryside, America
thing: table, car, banana, money, music, love, dog, monkey

The problem with this definition is that it does not explain why "love" is a noun but can also be a verb.

Another (more complicated) way of recognizing a noun is by its: Ending, Position, Function

1. Noun Ending

There are certain word endings that show that a word is a noun for example:

-ity > nationality

-ment > appointment

-ness > happiness

-ation > relation

-hood > childhood

But this is not true for the word endings of all nouns.

For example, the noun "spoonful" ends in -ful, but the adjective "careful" also ends in -ful.

2. Position in Sentence

We can often recognise a noun by its position in the sentence. Nouns often come after a determiner (a determiner is a word like a, an, the, this, my, such): a relief, an afternoon, the doctor, this word, my house, such stupidity.

Nouns often come after one or more adjectives:a great relief, a peaceful afternoon, the tall, Indian doctor, this difficult wordmy brown and white house such crass stupidity

3. Function in a Sentence

Nouns have certain functions (jobs) in a sentence, for example:

subject of verb: Doctors work hard.
object of verb: He likes coffee.
subject and object of verb: Teachers teach students.

But the subject or object of a sentence is not always a noun. It could be a pronoun or a phrase. In the sentence "My doctor works hard", the noun is "doctor" but the subject is "My doctor".

There are infact six different type of nouns: