What is a noun?

What is a Noun? noun (noun): a word (except a pronoun) that identifies a person, place or thing, or names one of them (proper noun) 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 Note that any of the above can also be referred to by a pronoun. And note that names like John or America are called "proper nouns". The problem with the simple definition above 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 word my 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". read less