First Things First
First, think about what you already know about nouns. Think about what you want or need to learn about them. What is your ultimate goal?
Next, download this outline so that you can see the bigger picture a little more easily. You can complete it in WordPad (if you haven’t upgraded to Windows 11 and lost it) or in a free or paid word processing application such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer.
What Is a Noun?
You’ve probably heard that a noun is a person, place, or thing. This well-known sentence is the simplest definition of a noun. It was the subject of a very well-known song from Schoolhouse Rock! (Please note that the word grammar is misspelled in the title!)
In recent years, grammarians have decided that a better, more expansive (complete) definition is that a noun is a person, place, thing, animal, or idea. (Some folks lump animals in with things, but I choose not to do that.) Here are some examples:
- Person: girl, teacher, Mrs. Jernigan
- Place: house, Harper’s Ferry
- Thing: toy, bottle
- Animal: dog, lion
- Idea: independence, fascism
When I was a girl back in the olden days, we classified ideas like independence and fascism as things, but I like the idea classification better. What do you think?
A final note before we get into more details: Check out the examples above, and you’ll see that a single noun can be made up of more than one word. Additional examples are United States of America, World War II, and Flowood High School.
How To Tell If a Word is a Noun
Other than the definition, we have several ways to check to see if a word is a noun. If you can’t tell a word is a noun based on the definition or if you just want to double check for some reason, you can use the tests below.
Try Making a Suspected Noun Plural
For one thing, you can frequently make a noun plural–plural means more than one of an item–typically by adding an -s or -es, depending on the word’s ending. Here are some examples using the words we started with above. (Yes, I know I used a terminal preposition there. I’ll talk more about those later.)
- girls
- teachers
- toys
- bottles
- dogs
- lions
Forming plurals of proper nouns like Mrs. Jernigan and Harper’s Ferry and abstract nouns like independence and fascism doesn’t really work as well. (We’ll talk more about proper and abstract nouns later.) But we have other noun tests you can use. I suggest trying them all!
Try Inserting a Noun Marker in Front of a Suspected Noun
Another noun test is that you can insert the word the in front of many (but again not all) nouns. Here are some examples:
- (the) girl
- (the) teacher
- (the) house
- (the) toy
- (the) bottle
- (the) dog
- (the) lion
In the examples above, we call the word the a noun marker. Other noun markers are a, an, these, those, that, and this. Here are some examples:
- a girl, these girls
- that teacher, those teachers
Again, proper nouns and ideas (also called abstract nouns) don’t work as well with noun markers either. We’ll talk more about this topic later.
One other thing that might be obvious: the words you’re using as noun markers are not nouns.
Try Making a Suspected Noun Possessive
Another way you can check to see if a word is a noun is to make the word possessive. Here are some examples:
- girl’s doll
- teacher’s classroom
- Mrs. Jernigan’s car
- toy’s wheels
- bottle’s lid
- dog’s bowl
- lion’s mane
- independence’s cradle
- fascism’s hold
Use a Noun Frame Sentence
Another way to check to see if a word is a noun is to put a suspected noun in the slot of what we call a frame sentence. The noun frame sentence is as follows: (The) _____ seems okay. (The slot is the _____. Put the suspected noun there.)
- The girl seems okay.
- The teacher seems okay.
- The house seems okay.
- The toy seems okay.
- The bottle seems okay.
- The dog seems okay.
- The lion seems okay.
I put the word the in parentheses when I write out the frame sentence because you can leave it off, particularly for proper nouns and abstract nouns. We’ll talk more about those later. In the meantime, here are some examples:
- Mrs. Jernigan seems okay.
- Harper’s Ferry seems okay.
- Independence seems okay.
Sometimes a sentence doesn’t make sense or is incorrect in this frame sentence. You can change the word okay to bad because both are adjectives. We’ll talk more about adjectives later. For now, here is an example of substituting another adjective:
- Fascism seems bad (instead of fascism seems okay).
- Cheating seems bad.
For plural nouns, you will need to substitute seem for seems. Here are examples:
- The girls seem okay.
- The teachers seem okay.
You can also substitute the linking verbs is or are for seems or seem. Here are examples:
- The girl is okay.
- Harper’s Ferry is okay.
Any Questions?
Here’s my completed outline: It’s a concise downloadable one-page outline/summary of this information.
Do you have a good idea of what a noun is now? If so, play this game on Blooket to test your skills. When you feel confident in your abilities, you can proceed to the next section, where you will learn about–or refresh your memory about–common and proper nouns.
If you are still confused, send me a message. I’m glad to help.
Best wishes,
Erin
