Grammar Punk Blog

Most of us know what a noun is. In fact, we figured that nouns (and verbs) are so easy to identify and so well known, we didn’t even include it on the Grammar Punk dice, making room for more advanced parts of speech. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t use a little review, right? And we may even learn something we didn’t know.

The word noun itself comes from the Latin word nomen, which means name. That makes sense, because that’s pretty much what a noun is. It names something. You may remember hearing this definition of a noun in school: “A noun is a person, place, or thing.” That’s a good definition, and it’s easy to remember.

There are two types of nouns: common and proper. Common nouns are general nouns like cup, clock, book, keyboard, desk, chair, and table. Proper nouns are capitalized, and they name specific persons, places, or things, like Eiffel Tower, New York State Fair, Nancy, Sue, and Greg.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to make nouns plural and possessive.