Nouns — Nouns and Gender Defined

Nouns — Nouns and Gender Defined

Nouns Defined

A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea: John, school, book, democracy.

Nouns are generally classified as proper nouns or common nouns.

A PROPER NOUN is the name of a particular person, place, or thing: Mr. Smith, Boston, January. Note that proper nouns are always capitalized.

A COMMON NOUN is the name given to any one of a general class of persons, places, or things. Common nouns are not capitalized:—student, book, hill.

Nouns are also frequently classified further as (1) concrete or (2) abstract (3) collective.

A CONCRETE NOUN is the name of anything that can be seen, touched, felt: desk, book, tooth, perfume.

An ABSTRACT NOUN is one which names some quality, idea, or general characteristic: love, honesty, truth.

A COLLECTIVE NOUN is the name of a group or collection of things: team, committee, army.

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Gender Defined

In English all nouns belong to one of the following four genders: masculine, feminine, common, neuter.

Masculine gender denotes the male sex and includes words such as boy, brother, uncle, father etc. Many masculine nouns end in -er or -or (author, actor, painter, broker).

Feminine gender denotes the female sex and includes words such as girl, sister, aunt, mother. Many feminine nouns end in -ess (actress, empress, seamstress, governess).

Common gender denotes such words as servant, child, cook, teacher, which may be either masculine or feminine gender.

Neuter gender refers to all inanimate objects (hook, chair, sky), also to some animate objects of a very low order (snake, bug, mosquito).

In Spanish all nouns are either masculine or feminine. There are no neuter nouns. As a general rule, all nouns which end in -o are masculine; all nouns which end in -a are feminine.