How To Identify Nouns

Nouns are the names of people, things or places. A word is probably a noun, if you can count it. Nouns can also be used with numbers.

For example, consider the word books. Can we count books? Of course, we can. How many books are there? Well, we don’t know the exact number, but there is definitely more than one.

Now consider the word flower. Can we count it? Yes, we can count flowers. Can we use numbers with the word flower? Yes, we can say one flower. And hence the word flower is a noun.

Nouns have several other properties, too.

Nouns can be preceded by the articles. Consider the noun girl. We can say a girl or the girl.

Nouns can be used with the demonstratives (this, that, these and those). We can say this girl or those girls.

Nouns can be used with possessives (my, your, their etc.). We can say my girl, your girl or their girl.

Nouns can be used with quantifiers (some, any, few, all, both etc.). We can say some girls or few girls.

Proper nouns are a different kind of nouns. They are the names of particular people, countries, rivers etc. Examples are: India, Sophia, Krishna and Amazon. We cannot use numbers or articles with proper nouns, but they are easy to identify. Proper nouns always begin with a capital letter even when they come in the middle of a sentence.

There is yet another category of nouns called abstract nouns. Most of these are uncountable nouns with no plural forms. We cannot use numbers or articles with them.

Abstract nouns usually refer to a quality of some kind. Examples are: kindness, honesty, bravery, beauty etc.

Exercise

Identify the nouns in the following sentences.

1. Sophia is my niece.

2. Amazon is the largest river in the world.

3. Children usually rush about.

4. The elephant is the largest animal on land.

5. Honesty is the best policy.

6. Experience is the best teacher in the world.

Answers

Sophia, niece, Amazon, river, world, children, elephant, animal, land, honesty, policy, experience, teacher, world