Concrete and abstract nouns
المؤلف:
EVELYNP.ALTENBERG & ROBERTM.VAGO
المصدر:
English Grammar Understanding the basics
الجزء والصفحة:
P5-C1
2025-10-31
26
Concrete and abstract nouns
Here’s an unusual sentence: He smelled the marriage. What makes this sentence unusual is that we don’t generally think of the noun marriage as something that can be smelled. Some nouns are concrete: they can be perceived by our senses-they are things that we can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Those nouns that are not concrete are abstract. Marriage is something abstract, so it’s odd to say it’s being perceived by one of our senses, our sense of smell.
The nouns were all concrete nouns. Other nouns, such as marriage, are abstract; this means that they refer to things that you cannot perceive with your senses, things you cannot see, smell, feel, taste, or touch. Here are some more concrete and abstract nouns:
Quick tip
Concrete nouns refer to things we can perceive with one of our senses. Abstract nouns cannot be perceived by our senses.
Answers
An abstract noun is sometimes easier to identify if you create a sentence with it. For example, the happiness is a unit, as can be seen in The happiness on her face delighted him. Thus, happiness is a noun. Here are some other abstract nouns in sentences; the nouns are underlined.
1. It was not the complaint which bothered him.
2.They were attempting to stop the abuse.
3.The joy which they felt was obvious.
Another easy way to identify a noun, especially an abstract noun, is to put the word his (or other words like it) in front of it and see if it sounds like a unit. For example, his complaint, his happiness, his concern all are units; therefore, complaint, happiness, and concern are nouns.
Quick tip
If you can put his in front of a word and it sounds like a unit, the word is a noun.
Answers
The nouns are underlined in the following sentences:
4. This author lives with her husband.
5. Do most people proceed contentedly through life?
6. Your photograph of that child sleeping won you a prize.
As you can see from these sentences, while the _____ or his ______ are ways to test a word to see if it’s a noun, a noun doesn’t necessarily have the or his in front of it in every sentence.
Since we can say the author, the husband, the people, his life, the photograph, his child, and his prize, the underlined words in sentences 4-6 are each nouns.
Answers
It’s important to realize that the same word can often be used as more than one part of speech. For example, repair can be used as a noun (example: The repair was relatively in expensive), as an adjective (example: The repair manual was not very helpful), or as a verb (example: He needs to repair the washing machine).
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