Types of noun

There are a few different types of noun in English:

• common nouns and proper nouns

• abstract nouns and concrete nouns

• collective nouns

• compound nouns

• countable and uncountable nouns.

For details concerning the particular types see below.

Common & proper nouns

Nouns are either proper or common. Proper nouns identify a specific person, place, or thing and they always begin with a capital letter. These can be names of people, places, organisations, days, months, events, special occasions, languages etc. (e.g. Poland, Krakow, Christmas, Ms Jones, Karen, Saturday). Common nouns are used to categorize or label people or things and are written with lower case letters (e.g. dog, man, chair, film). The majority of nouns are common nouns. Common nouns are further categorized as concrete, abstract, and collective nouns. 

Abstract & concrete nouns

Concrete nouns are tangible and you can experience them with your five senses: we can see, touch, taste, smell, or hear what concrete nouns represent (e.g. table, cat, onion, flower, song). 

Abstract nouns, on the other hand, refer to intangible things that you can’t see, touch or otherwise directly experience by any of the human senses, like actions, feelings, ideas, concepts, qualities etc. Although we cannot physically substantiate what an abstract noun represents, we know it exists (e.g. beauty, courage, fear, love, faith, marriage, intelligence).

Collective nouns

A collective noun is a word referring to a collection of people or things taken as a whole. Collective nouns refer to a group of people, animals or things, e.g. band, class, committee, crew, family, government, group, staff, team, bunch, stack. Many proper nouns fall into this category, e.g. Sony, Apple, CNN, the BBC, the United Nations, the FBI, Manchester United, British Airways.

In British English a collective noun can be singular OR plural, depending on how you see the individuals in the group. In American English a singular verb should be used after collective nouns.

• In BrE: The jury has/have reached a verdict. The use depends on whether you are referring to the jury as a whole or to the individual members. 

• In AmE the correct form is: The jury has reached a verdict.

There are certain collective nouns which always take the plural verb, e.g. police, people, cattle: The police are investigating the case.

Compound nouns

Compound nouns are usually made up of two (but sometimes of more) words. They can be written as a single word (e.g. bathroom, haircut, snowflake, mailbox), two (or multiple) words used separately (e.g. ice cream, running shoes, New Year's Day, bus station), or connected by a hyphen (e.g. dry-cleaning, jack-in-the-box).

• Normally, the plural is made by adding an -s to the end, e.g. breakdowns, break-ins, bookcases, two Indian take-aways, car parks, good-for-nothings, grown-ups, go-betweens.

• Where man and woman is prefixed both parts are made plural, e.g. men drivers, women teachers, women doctors.

• With compounds composed of: (1) verb + -er nouns + adverbs and with (2) noun + preposition + noun – the first word is made plural, e.g.:

(1) hangers-on, lookers-on, runners-up, passers-by

(2) ladies-in-waiting, brothers-in-law.

• A compound word which ends in -ful normally adds -s after -ful, but an alternative form with the -s following the base noun is also possible (although much less common), e.g. two spoonfuls/spoonsful, two mouthfuls/mouthsful.

Countable & uncountable nouns

Some common nouns are countable. These are nouns we can quantify: one desk, ten chairs, two hundred balls, six thousand people. They can be singular or plural (e.g. child – children, lesson –  lessons). 

Other common nouns are uncountable. Uncountable nouns are things we cannot count, like: food and drink (bread, butter, milk), materials (metal, oxygen, paper), ideas and feelings (advice, beauty, love), activities (swimming, running, shopping), groups of similar things (luggage, furniture, money). These are not used in the plural and we do not use the indefinite article with them. 

Some nouns can be both – countable and uncountable. It depends if we are using them to refer to a single thing (There's a hair in my soup. Would you like a coffee?) or to a substance or general idea (Her hair is long. I don't drink coffee.). Sometimes the meaning of the countable noun and its uncountable version is different, e.g. iron / an iron, glass / a glass, paper / a paper.

When we want to talk about separate units or parts of nouns which are uncountable, we can use quantity expressions like a piece, a bit, an item and many other nouns used for measures or containers, e.g. a bottle of milk, a sheet of paper, a bag of cement, a bar of chocolate, a lump of sugar.

Irregular plurals

Irregular plural nouns are nouns that do not become plural by adding -s or -es, as most nouns in the English language do. There are hundreds of them and you must memorize them through reading and listening. There are, however, some common patterns that will help you remember some of them. 

IRREGULAR PLURALS – LIST

Nouns ending in -s

-with singular verbs

Some uncountable nouns end in -s but take a singular verb (as all uncountable nouns do), e.g.:

• some illnesses: hepatitis, mumps, measles, rabies, rickets (e.g. German measles is an infectious disease that causes red spots on the skin.)

• sport and games: gymnastics, aerobics, darts, billiards, dominoes (e.g. Darts is my favourite game.)

• study / abstract ideas / emotions: statistics, economics, politics, news, happiness (e.g. This news is wonderful! Mathematics is not as difficult as physics.)

A plural subject describing a specific measurement usually takes a singular verb:

• e.g. Twenty-four hours is a long time to wait for the results. Ten kilometres is quite a long walk.

- with plural verbs

A few nouns are more common in the plural form or are always plural and take a plural verb, e.g. goods, clothes, remains, stairs, proceeds, outskirts, surroundings, facilities, contents (e.g. The outskirts of a city or town are the parts of it that are farthest away from its centre.)

Some nouns refer to one object divided into two parts and take the plural verb: e.g. glasses, pyjamas, scales, scissors, spectacles, trousers, pants, binoculars, jeans (e.g. Your binoculars are on the kitchen table.)