Parts of Speech Table

This is a summary of the 8 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you
click on each part of speech.
part of
speech
function or
"job"
example
words
example sentences
Verb action or state (to) be, have,
do, like,
work, sing,
can, must
EnglishClub.com is a web site.
Ilike EnglishClub.com.
Noun thing or person pen, dog,
work, music,
town,
London,
teacher, John
This is my dog. He lives in my
house. We live in London.
Adjective describes a
noun
a/an, the, 69,
some, good,
big, red, well,
interesting
My dog is big. I like big dogs.
Adverb describes a
verb, adjective
or adverb
quickly,
silently, well,
badly, very,
really
My dog eats quickly. When he
is very hungry, he
eats reallyquickly.
Pronoun replaces a noun I, you, he,
she, some
Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
Preposition links a noun to
another word
to, at, after,
on, but
We went to school on Monday.
Conjunction joins clauses or
sentences or
words
and, but,
when
I like dogs and I like cats. I
like cats and dogs. I like
dogs but I don't like cats.
Interjection short
exclamation,
sometimes
inserted into a
sentence
oh!, ouch!,
hi!, well
Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are
you? Well, I don't know.
* Some grammar sources categorize English into 9 or 10 parts of speech. At
EnglishClub.com, we use the traditional categorization of 8 parts of speech.
Examples of other categorizations are:
Verbs may be treated as two different parts of speech:
o Lexical Verbs (work, like, run)
o Auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
Determiners may be treated as a separate part of speech, instead of
being categorized under Adjectives
NOUN
Definition:
The part of speech (or word class) that is used to name or identify a person, place, thing, quality, or action. Adjective:nominal.
Most nouns have both a singular and plural form, can be preceded by an article and/or one or more adjectives, and can serve as
the head of a noun phrase.
A noun or noun phrase can function as a subject, direct object, indirect object, complement,appositive, or object of a preposition.
In addition, nouns sometimes modify other nouns to formcompound nouns. See "Observations," below.
Types of Nouns:
Abstract Noun
A noun (such as courage or freedom) that names an idea, event, quality, or concept. Contrast with concrete noun.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "drawn away"


Examples and Observations:
"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
(Robert Frost)



"Creativity requires the courage to let go ofcertainties."
(Erich Fromm)



"Men say they love independence in a woman, but they don't waste a second demolishing it brick by brick."
(Candice Bergen)



"When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!"
(Laurie Anderson)



"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads todespair and utter hopelessness. The other,
to total extinction. Let us pray we have thewisdom to choose correctly."
(Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates")



"Abstract and concrete are usually defined together or in terms of each other. The abstract is that which exists only in our
minds, that which we cannot know through our senses. It includes qualities, relationships, conditions, ideas, theories, states of
being, fields of inquiry and the like. We cannot know a quality such as consistency directly through our senses; we can only
see or hear about people acting in ways that we come to label consistent."
(William Vande Kopple, Clear and Coherent Prose. Scott, Foresman, 1989)



"Although abstract nouns tend to be uncountable (courage, happiness, news, tennis, training), many are countable (an hour,
a joke, a quantity). Others can be both, often with shifts of meaning from general to particular (great kindness/many
kindnesses)."
(Tom McArthur, "Abstract and Concrete." The Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1992)



"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy--but that could change."
(Dan Quayle)

Concrete Noun
A noun (such as chicken or egg) that names a material or tangible object or phenomenon--something recognizable
through the senses. Contrast with abstract noun.
Examples and Observations:
"Abstract and general terms represent ideas, explain attitudes, and explore relationships such as contigency (if something will
happen), causality (why it occurs), and priority (what is first in time or importance). Concrete and specific words clarify and
illustrate between abstract and concrete words and general and specific language, blending them naturally.

"To achieve this mix, use abstract and general words to state your ideas. Use specific and concrete words to illustrate and
support them."
(Robert DiYanni and Pat C. Hoy II, The Scribner Handbook for Writers, 3rd ed. Allyn and Bacon, 2001)



"With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?"
(Bob Dylan, "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands")



"Beauty and fear are abstract ideas; they exist in your mind, not in the forest along with the trees and the
owls. Concrete words refer to things we can touch, see, hear, smell, and taste, such as sandpaper, soda, birch trees, smog,
cow, sailboat, rocking chair, andpancake. . . .

"Good writing balances ideas and facts, and it also balances abstract and concretediction. If the writing is too abstract, with
too few concrete facts and details, it will be unconvincing and tiresome. If the writing is too concrete, devoid of ideas and
emotions, it can seem pointless and dry."
(Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz, Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition. St. Martin's, 1982)



"At middle age the soul should be opening up like a rose, not closing up like a cabbage."
(John Andrew Holmes)

Animate Noun
A semantic category of noun, referring to a person, animal, or other creature. Contrast with inanimate noun.
Examples and Observations:
"Bill Clinton loves to shop. On a March day in an elegant crafts store in Lima, the Peruvian capital, he hunted for presents for
his wife and the women on his staff back home. He had given a speech at a university earlier and just came from a ceremony
kicking off a program to help impoverished Peruvians. Now he was eyeing a necklace with a green stone amulet."
(Peter Baker, "It's Not About Bill." The New York Times Magazine, May 31, 2009)



"Well, at the moment we've got a stockbroker, an overworked doctor, an underworked antiques shop owner, a disillusioned
imports manager, and an even more disillusioned exports manager. Three sacked football managers, a fortune tellerwho's
going to have a nervous breakdown next April, a schoolteacher who's desperate because he can't get a job,
a schoolteacher who's even more desperate because he has got a job, an extremely shy vet, an overstressed car salesmanand a
pre-stressed concrete salesman."
(Leonard Rossiter as Reginald Perrin in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, 1976)



"An examination of a wide range of languages suggests that there is a universal 'scale of animacy,' and that different
languages draw their distinctions between animate and inanimate at different points on the scale. Underlying the scale is
something like perceived potency, importance, or ability to act on other things, rather than a simple possession or non-
possession of life. One version of the animacy hierarchy is as follows (in order of decreasing animacy):
1st person pronoun > 2nd person pronoun > 3rd person pronoun > Human proper noun > Human common noun > Animate
noun > Inanimate noun"
(Alan Cruse, A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2006)

Inanimate Noun
A semantic category of noun that refers to a place, thing, or idea--not a person, animal, or other creature. Contrast withanimate
noun.
Examples and Observations:
"Bill Clinton loves to shop. On a March day in an elegant crafts store in Lima, the Peruvian capital, he hunted
for presents for his wife and the women on his staff back home. He had given a speech at a university earlier and just came
from aceremony kicking off a program to help impoverished Peruvians. Now he was eyeing anecklace with a green stone
amulet."
(Peter Baker, "It's Not About Bill," The New York Times Magazine, May 31, 2009)



"Your complaints about late delay are not only completely unjustified, but also ungrammatical. The fault lies in
your inability to fill in an order formcorrectly. You are, in effect, a pompous, illiterate baboon."
(Leonard Rossiter in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, 1976)



"Amir has just counted our luggage and in all we have twenty-one pieces, countingcameras, guns, bags, boxes, trunks,
umbrellas, etc. Our boat to Singapore is just a few hundred feet away from this hotel and it looks very big and nice."
(Rosamond's letter to Bub, Jan. 3, 1907. Letters Written While on a Collecting Trip in the East Indies, by Thomas Barbour
and Rosamond Barbour, 1913)



"[W]hen using language figuratively or in children's stories (e.g., The tugboat smiled as she safely guided the ocean liner
through the channel), human characteristics may be assigned to an inanimate noun as denoted by the use of smiled and she."
(Virginia A. Heidinger, Analyzing Syntax and Semantics. Gallaudent Univ. Press, 1984)



"The most cited gendered reference to an inanimate object today may be the use of sheto refer to ships. This usage was first
noted by Ben Jonson in his English Grammar of 1640; he names ships as an exception to the rule that it refers to inanimate
objects . . .. In 2002, it was announced that Lloyd's List, the world's best-known source of maritime business news and
information, would stop using she in reference to ships, switching over instead to it."
(Anne Curzan, Gender Shifts in the History of English. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003)



Possessive Forms of Inanimate Nouns
"Many English teachers advise against applying the possessive case to inanimate objects. Possession is a privilege limited to
living things. It does not make sense for a car or a house or a bicycle to own anything in the way that the possessive case
expresses ownership. The type of possession allowed inanimate objects is typically expressed by the phrase beginning withof:
the roof of the house not the house's roof

the hood of the car not the car's hood

the tire of the bike not the bike's tire
"Like many grammar issues, however, this one requires a judgment call. Through popular usage, some nouns that name
inanimate objects have acquired the rights to their possessive case forms:
my mind's eye
a moment's delay
a week's vacation
two weeks' notice
the sun's rays
the Season's Greetings
At times creative license may grant you the right to make use of an inanimate object in a possessive form."
(Michael Strumpf and Auriel Douglas, The Grammar Bible. Owl Books, 2004)

Attributive Noun
A noun that modifies another noun and functions as anadjective.
Examples and Observations:
King Tutankhamun is known as the 'boy king' because he became the pharaoh of Egypt at the age of nine.



We obtained the permit from a governmentofficial.



Our son was expelled from nursery school.



Attributive Nouns in the Dictionary
"The italicized label often attrib placed after the functional label n indicates that the noun is often used as an adjective
equivalent in attributive position before another noun:
bot-tle . . . n, often attrib
busi-ness . . . n, often attrib
Examples of the attributive use of these nouns are bottle opener and business ethics.

"While any noun may occasionally be used attributively, the label often attrib is limited to those having broad attributive use.
This label is not used when an adjective homograph(as iron or paper) is entered. And it is not used at open compounds
(as health food) that may be used attributively with an inserted hyphen (as in health-food store)."
(Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. Merriam-Webster, 2004)



Positioning Attributive Nouns
"[A]ny noun can occur in three syntactic positions: as subject, direct object, and indirect object. But in its secondary function
of a noun attribute it occurs only in one position--before a noun. It is true that an attributive noun can modify all three kinds
of predicate argument. But these three syntactic positions count as one because the attributive function of the attributive noun
is identical in all these positions."
(Sebastian Shaumyan, Signs, Mind, and Reality: A Theory of Language as the Folk Model of the World. John Benjamins,
2006)



Usage Guideline: Multiple Attributive Nouns
"You see noun clusters in technical proposals and technical documentation. For example, here's a title that appeared on a
proposal I received:
FAX TRANSMISSION NETWORK ACCESS COST OPTIMIZATION PROPOSAL
Isn't that a jewel? . . .

"Bear in mind, it has always been legal in English to use one noun to modify another noun. The first noun functions as an
adjective in such a construction and is usually called an 'attributive noun.' Examples are telephone company, cellular phone,
bus stop, marriage certificate, book store, and materials laboratory. The problem arises when a whole slew of nouns are
crammed together. The poor reader's brain has no way to decode this mess until he or she has already gone through it once.
Then the reader has to go back through, figure out which nouns are functioning as nouns, which are adjectives, and what goes
with what, and try to make sense out of it.

"If you catch yourself writing a noun cluster, what should you do? First, identify the key noun in the sequence. Then put it up
front. Look for an opportunity to use a verb, and don't hesitate to link your words with new prepositions."
(Tom Sant, Persuasive Business Proposals, 2nd ed. AMACOM, 2004)



Punctuation With Attributive Nouns
"Attributive Nouns. The apostrophe is omitted when a plural head noun ending in sfunctions as an adjective rather than as a
possessor; in other words, when the relation between the plural head noun and the second noun could be expressed by the
prepositions 'for' or 'by' rather than the possessive 'of': carpenters union, New York Mets first baseman. If the plural form of
the head noun does not end in s, however, the apostrophe is used: the people's republic, a children's hospital. This convention
explains the absence of an apostrophe in such proper nouns as Teachers College (in New York City), Department of Veterans
Affairs, and Consumers Union. . . ."

"A final problem related to adjectives and adverbs arises from the fact that neither 'adjectiveness' nor 'adverbiality' is a quality
inherent to a word. Home, for example, may function as a noun ('This is our home'), as an adjective ('Taste our home
cooking'), or as an adverb ('We went home'). Because nouns may function as adjectives (the technical term for a noun that
modifies a subsequent noun is attributive noun), 'government offices' is as correct as--and many would say preferable to--
'governmental offices.'"
(Amy Einsohn, The Copyeditor's Handbook, 2nd ed. Univ. of California Press, 2006)
Also Known As: noun premodifier, noun adjunct, converted adjective


Collective Noun
A noun (such as team, committee, or family) that refers to a group of individuals.
In American English, collective nouns usually take singular verb forms. Collective nouns can be replaced by both singular and
plural pronouns, depending on their meaning. (See observations below.)


Examples and Observations:
"The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
(George Santayana)



"The minority is sometimes right; the majorityalways wrong."
(George Bernard Shaw)



"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, thejury would never hear the
evidence."
(H.L. Mencken)



"Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening."
(Dorothy Sarnoff)



"Liverpool are magic, Everton are tragic."
(Emlyn Hughes, referring to two English football teams)



"New York is now assured of winning the three-game series after going 0 and 7 away from home."
(Associated Press, referring to an American baseball team)



"Nouns such as committee, family, government, jury, and squad take a singular verb orpronoun when thought of as a single
unit, but a plural verb or pronoun when thought of as a collection of individuals:


The committee gave its unanimous approval to the plans.
The committee enjoyed biscuits with their tea.
(David Marsh, Guardian Style, Guardian Books, 2007)



"It is possible for singular collective nouns to be followed either by a singular or a plural verb form (see number):
The audience was delighted with the performance.
The audience were delighted with the performance.
The first of these options is normal in American English. In British English both options are found."
(Geoffrey Leech, A Glossary of English Grammar. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2006)



"Many noncount nouns have an equivalent countable expression using such words
aspiece or bit (partitive or collective nouns) followed by of:


luck: a piece of luck
grass: a blade of grass
bread: a loaf of bread
A common quiz question is to find the special collective term which describes such groups of things: a flock of sheep,
a prideof lions. English has some highly specialized (but nowadays rarely used) collective nouns, especially for animals. . . .
One of them [is]a kindleof kittens. Other colourful collectives are:


an exaltation of larks
a muster of peacocks
a rout of wolves
a skulk of foxes"
(David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Common Noun
A noun that can be preceded by the definite article (the) and that represents one or all of the members of a class.
As a general rule, a common noun does not begin with a capital letter unless it appears at the start of a sentence. Contrast
withproper noun.
Common nouns can be subdivided into count nouns and mass nouns. Semantically, common nouns can be classified as abstract
nouns and concrete nouns.


See also:
Genericide
Notes on Nouns
Examples and Observations:
"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his partydid not miss the boat."
(Mark Twain)



"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy."
(John Updike)



"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and ourhearts are open."
(Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling, 2000)



"Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our mainimports are baseball players and acid
rain."
(Pierre Trudeau)



Dr. Gregory House: Dr. House, I don't think we've met.
Dr. Jaime Conway: Dr. Jamie Conway, I've heard your name.
Dr. Gregory House: Most people have. It's also a noun.
(Hugh Laurie and Rob Benedict, "Living the Dream." House M.D., 2008)



"Common nouns can be modified by a variety of other parts of speech and types ofphrase,
including articles, demonstratives, possessives, adjectives, prepositional phrases, and relative clauses. The examples below
show some of the possibilities:


these two short planks
Frank's tubby red-haired wife
a bath with Rosie
a tune that anyone can whistle
In each of these examples, the [italicized] common noun acts as the head of a noun phrase."
(James R. Hurford, Grammar. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994)



"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soulof the boy sitting next to me."
(Woody Allen)



"Europeans, like some Americans, drive on the right side of the road, except in England, where they drive on
both sides of the road; Italy, where they drive on the sidewalk; and France, where if necessary they will follow you right into
the hotel lobby."
(Dave Barry)



"It is possible . . . for proper nouns to lose their capital letter and come into the language as ordinary words. This
process gives rise to a surprising number of new words. For example, trade names have given us filofax, playdough,
velcro and walkman, to name just a few that have recently entered the language. Place names can also become common
nouns. For example, the word jeans has its origin in the town of Genoa, where a type of heavy fabric (resembling denim) was
once made; denim itself derives from Nmes, the name of a city in southern France (originally serge de Nmes'serge [cloth] of
Nmes'). When personal names convert to ordinary nouns, their behaviour is no different from that of other common nouns."
(Kersti Brjars and Kate Burridge, Introducing English Grammar, 2nd ed. Hodder, 2010)

Proper Noun
A noun belonging to the class of words used as names for unique individuals, events, or places. Contrast with common
noun.
Most proper nouns (for example, Fred, New York, Mars, Coca Cola) begin with a capital letter. Proper nouns are not
usually preceded by articles or other determiners. Most proper nouns are singular.
Examples:
"I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight."
(Juliette G. Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of America)



"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more
dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."
(Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Copper Beeches")



"Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live on in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and
deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."
(President Franklin D. Roosevelt)



"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
(Albert Einstein)



"You are Omaticaya now. You may make your bow from the wood of Hometree. And you may choose a woman. We have
many fine women. Ninat is the best singer."
(Neytiri in Avatar, 2009)



"Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success
because a few people survived on life rafts."
(Eugene McCarthy)



"Some kids dream of joining the circus, others of becoming a major league baseball player. As a member of the New York
Yankees, I've gotten to do both."
(Graig Nettles)



"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
(Ross MacDonald)



"George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise."
(Al Gore)

Compound Noun
Two or more nouns combined to form a single noun.
Compound nouns are written as separate words (grapefruit juice), as words linked by a hyphen (sister-in-law), or as
one word (schoolteacher).
A compounded noun whose form no longer clearly reveals its origin (such as bonfire or marshall) is sometimes called
anamalgamated compound. Many place names (or toponyms) are amalgamated compounds:
e.g., Norwich (north + village) and Sussex (south +Saxons).
Examples and Observations:
The whole idea started with a parent who wanted to do a fundraiser for the snowboardingteam at Nevada Union.



"The shutters were over the windows, so the little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the
two big oak trees that in the summertimehad made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under."
(Laura I. Wilder)



"Boyhood is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living
through them is like waiting for the millennium."
(Booth Tarkington)



"Chalkboarding is not torture."
(Bart Simpson, The Simpsons)



"The health care system is really designed to reward you for being unhealthy. If you are a healthy person and work hard to be
healthy, there are no benefits."
(Mike Huckabee)



"The compound noun structure is extremely varied in the types of meaning relations it can indicate. It can be used to indicate
what someone does (language teacher), what something is for (waste-paper basket, grindstone), what the qualities of
something are (whiteboard), how something works (immersion heater), when something happens (night frost), where
something is (doormat), what something is made of (woodpile), and so on."
(Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge University Press, 2006)



"Human service is the highest form of self-interest for the person who serves."
(Elbert Hubbard)


Count Noun
A noun that refers to an object or idea that can form a plural or occur in a noun phrase with an indefinite article or with numerals.
Contrast with mass noun (or noncount noun).
Most common nouns in English are countable--that is, they have both singular and plural forms.
Examples and Observations:
"Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back."
(Eugene O'Neill)



"Count nouns are those that denote enumerable things and that are capable of forming plurals (e.g., cranes, parties,
minivans, oxen);mass (noncount) nouns are often abstract nouns--they cannot be enumerated (e.g.,insurance, courage, mud).
Many nouns can be both count <he gave several talks> and mass <talk is cheap>, depending on the sense. These are few,
however, in comparison to the nouns that are exclusively either count or mass."
(Bryan A. Garner, "Count Nouns and Mass Nouns." Garner's Modern American Usage. Oxford Univ. Press, 2003)



"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)



"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."
(Oscar Wilde)



"Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls."
(Max Beerbohm)



"Common nouns can be divided into two types. Count nouns refer to individual, countable entities, such as books, eggs,
and horses. Noncount nouns refer to an undifferentiated mass or notion, such as butter, music, and advice. Noncount nouns
are also known as mass nouns. . . .

"Some nouns can be either count or noncount, depending on their meaning. Cake, for example, is a count noun in this
sentence:
Would you like a cake?
but a noncount noun in this one:
Do you like cake?"
(David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003)



"What is a count noun in one language may be a mass noun in another and vice versa. There can be significant differences
between English dialects too. For example, inAustralian English, lettuce is both a count and mass noun (e.g. I'd like two
lettuces, pleaseversus I like lettuce). For some speakers of American and British English, lettuce is only a mass noun (e.g. I'd
like two heads of lettuce, please versus I like lettuce)."
(Kersti Brjars and Kate Burridge, Introducing English Grammar, 2nd ed. Hodder, 2010

Mass Noun
A noun (such as advice, bread, knowledge, luck, spaghetti, andwork) that names things that in English cannot be counted.
A mass noun (also known as a noncount noun) is used only in the singular. Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all
uncountable nouns are abstract. Contrast with count noun.
Examples and Observations:
"Fun does not have a size."
(Bart Simpson in The Simpsons, 2001)



"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."
(Albert Einstein)



"Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back."
(Eugene O'Neill)



"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
(Aldous Huxley)



"I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted."
(Og Mandino)



"Some nouns can serve as both count and mass nouns. The noun war is an example. InWar is ghastly, war is a mass noun,
whereas in The wars between Rome and Carthage were ruinous, war is used as a count noun."
(James R. Hurford, Grammar: A Student's Guide. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994)



"English nouns denoting things that cannot be counted, such as wine, coffee, andintelligence, do not easily form plurals in
their central senses. Some of them, however, can be pluralized when they have transferred senses, such as varieties (Rhone
wines), measures (four coffees), or embodiments (alien intelligences). You should not overuse such unusual plurals, however,
since they can easily become pretentious, as they do in those silly signs announcing ice creams and hair stylings."
(R.L. Trask, Mind the Gaffe! Harper, 2006)



"Non-count nouns are often called 'mass' nouns. We have preferred 'non-count,' in part because it reflects clearly the test we
use for determining whether a noun is count or non-count, in part because 'mass' is not suitable for the full range of non-count
nouns. The term 'mass' is readily applicable with nouns like water or coal that denote substances but it is less evident that it
applies transparently to abstract non-count nouns such as knowledge, spelling, work."
(Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge Univ. Press,
2002)
Also Known As: noncount noun, uncountable noun

Verbal Noun
A noun that is derived from a verb (usually by adding the suffix -ing) and that exhibits the ordinary properties of a
noun.
As Sidney Greenbaum notes in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), "Verbal nouns contrast
with deverbal nouns, that is, other kinds of nouns derived from verbs, such asattempt, destruction, and including nouns
ending in -ing that do not have verbal force: building in The building was empty. They also contrast with the gerund,
which also ends in -ing, but issyntactically a verb."
Examples and Observations:
The building of the British Empire may be said to have begun with the ascent of Queen Elizabeth to the throne.



His acting of the part of Othello was distinguished by a breadth and grandeur that placed it far beyond the efforts of other
actors.



"Saluting the heroes who have fallen in the fighting of the last few days, my thoughts turn toward you, the victors in the next
battle."
(General Franchet d'Esperey, Sep. 9, 1914)



"The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young."
(Willa Cather)



Nominal Qualities of Verbal Nouns
"Though derived from a verb, a verbal noun is strictly a noun, and it exhibits nominal properties: it
takes determiners like the and this, it permits adjectives (but not adverbs), it permits following prepositional phrases (but
not objects), and it can even be pluralizedif the sense permits. Example: In football, the deliberate tripping of an opponent is
a foul. Here the verbal noun tripping takes the determiner the, the adjective deliberate and the prepositional phrase of an
opponent, but it exhibits no verbal properties at all. In other words, tripping in this case is a perfectly ordinary noun, behaving
just like any other noun, with no verbal properties in sight. Compare the last example with one involving the unremarkable
noun attack: In football, a deliberate attack on an opponent is a foul.
(R.L. Trask, Mind the Gaffe! Harper, 2006)



-ing Forms
"English . . . has a verb plus -ing form, rare in the multiplicity of its functions and in its complexity. No two grammars appear
to agree on the appropriate terms for these forms: gerund, verb noun, verbal noun, participial clause, participial
adjective, present participle, deverbal adjective, deverbal noun. Moreover, often one or another of its uses is omitted."
(Peter Newmark, "Looking at English Words in Translation." Words, Words, Words: The Translator and the Language
Learner, ed. by Gunilla M. Anderman and Margaret Rogers. Multilingual Matters, 1996)



Gerund and Verbal Noun
"Gerunds are defined by two properties, the first making them verb-like, the second noun-like:
(a) A gerund contains (at least) a verb stem and the suffix -ing.

(b) A gerund has one of the functions that are characteristic of nouns--or rather, . . . a gerund heads a phrase with one of the
functions that are characteristic of NPs . . ..
"The combination of verb-like and noun-like properties given in (a) and (b) underlies the traditional characterisation of
gerunds as 'verbal nouns.' Note, however, that this latter term, 'verbal noun,' implies that greater weight is attached to (b)
than to (a): a verbal noun is primarily a kind of noun, not a kind of verb."
(Rodney D. Huddleston, Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Also Known As: -ing noun