Types of Words

A noun is often defined as a person, place, or thing. This category of word includes proper nouns, which refer to unique things and which are easy to spot since we often capitalize them (e.g. Stephen Harper, St. Thomas University). There are also common nouns, which aren't capitalized and which describe one instance or example of a certain type of thing (e.g. a banana, pants).

Nouns can be concrete, meaning that they can describe something that we can see or touch (e.g. chair, grass), or they can be abstract, meaning that they describe a quality, concept, or object that is intangible (e.g. happiness, dreams, heaven).

Nouns can also be singular (e.g. one student) or plural (e.g. two students). In English, we usually make a noun plural by adding –s or –es to the end of that noun’s singular form, but there are a lot of irregular plurals, too (e.g. one moose, two moose; one child, two children).

You should know that a noun often travels with a posse of other words that describe it. Together, these words form noun phrases (e.g. That guy you introduced me to last night is a jerk.)