What is a noun?

Echoing a long-standing definition, a noun is a name given to a person, place or thing.

Some examples are: Musa (a person), Abuja (a place) and a box (a thing).

It’s important to note that noun is classified in various ways, and these classifications determine how they are used grammatically.

For example:

Common nouns and proper nouns – common nouns refer to generic names, such as ‘man’ or woman, while proper nouns refer to specific or given names, such as ‘Hajara,’ ‘John’ etc.

Other classifications include:

Concrete nouns and abstract nouns – concrete referring to things one can touch and feel, while abstract referring to the opposite, for example, air, politics, etc.

Countable and uncountable nouns

Countable nouns are those things that have a grammatical number, or can take plural makers like ‘s’ ‘ies’ ’ren’ etc. Take for example, books, flies and children

Uncountable nouns are those that do not have a plural marker or cannot be counted. Good examples include water, sugar, air, etc

Compound nouns – these are a combination of two nouns to make a single word or noun, e.g. houseboy, classroom, etc.

Collective nouns – These are nouns that inherently mean more than one; they refer to a group, for example, a family, an army, etc.

The conjugation of collective nouns and verbs can be tricky because sometimes they can take both singular and plural verbs.

I hope this summary helps.