Nouns and verbs are probably the two most important parts of speech in English. The core of every sentence is a noun (or pronoun) and a verb.

What is a noun?

We generally learn that a noun names a person, place, thing, or idea. In a sentence, a noun can be a subject or object.

Some nouns can be singular (talking about one thing), and others can be plural (talking about more than one thing). Other nouns are not countable.

Nouns for People

Here are examples of a noun naming a person:

Notice that in English some nouns for people’s names and titles, start with a capital letter. These are called proper nouns. Notice that some other nouns require words like an, a, and the before them. These are called articles.

Nouns for Places

Other nouns name places. Many of these are proper nouns, too, particularly names of countries, cities, states, mountains, bodies of water:

But other nouns for places are common nouns and do not need a capital letter:

Nouns for Things

Nouns can also be things, physical objects, stuff.

Some things are also proper nouns, if the are famous and unique:

Nouns for Ideas

Finally, nouns often name ideas, abstract concepts. These are like things, but they are not physical, you cannot touch or see them.

Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Nouns are either countable or uncountable (some people call these count nouns and noncount nouns). It is a good idea to learn if a new noun is countable or uncountable, because this will help you use correct grammar (such as indefinite articles).

Countable Nouns

Countable nouns can be counted with a number. Countable nouns are either singular or plural. Here are some examples:

Uncountable Nouns

Uncountable nouns can’t be counted. These include abstract nouns, fluids, and things like sand and rice, which are so small that we don’t count them. Here are some examples:

Singular and Plural forms of Nouns

In English we change the form of a countable noun to show if we are talking about just one thing (singular) or many things (plural). For most nouns, the plural form simply adds -s to the end of the word. For example, we say a car or one car, but we say two cars, three cars, many cars.