Common Nouns

Common nouns are nouns that are used to describe nonspecific people, places, or things. This makes them different from proper nouns, which indicate specificity.

In English, common nouns form the basis of most sentences and constitute the most common major type of noun. They are often used alongside a determiner or an article, and can be inflected by number, with every common noun possessing singular or plural forms.

Examples of common nouns include the following:

The boy counted fifty sheep.

Only a few days later, the sun wilted the young plants.

Like most languages, but unlike German and Luxembourgish, English nouns are never capitalised, unless they occur at the beginning of a sentence. For example:

The water was murky.

But:

Water spilled across the table.

Common nouns can be divided into different categories depending on the nature of what they are describing, namely:

• Concrete nouns: Anything that can interacted with using the five senses.
• Abstract nouns: Feelings, qualities, concepts, idea, etc.
• Collective nouns: A group consisting of more than one thing.
• Compound nouns: Nouns formed out of multiple words or word roots.