nouns

    Nouns are one of the nine parts of speech in the English language.

    A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea that acts as a subject, an object, or a predicate nominative in a sentence.

    Examples of nouns include musician or Jimi Hendrix (person), stage or Radio City Music Hall (place), guitar (thing), or creativity (idea).

    A simple test for a noun is adding the or a/an before the word. If it makes sense, then the word is probably a noun. This simple test can fail for three possible reasons:

1. Some nouns don’t work with an article. For example, consider the sport called skiing (derived from progressive form of the verb to ski).
2. Some non-nouns sound correct with an article, usually because the word could be a noun in another context. For example, consider the word ski, which can be used as both a verb and as a noun.
3. Some speakers/writers (particularly non-native speakers) may have a poor internal sense of which words sound correct with this test.

    A proper noun is the name of a specific person, place, group, or event. All other nouns are common nouns.

    The word musician would be a common noun, but Jimi Hendrix would be proper nouns (the name of a specific musician).

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