For example, the words Godzilla, Narnia, and fairy are all concrete nouns. Fictional or imaginary people, places, and things are also often referred to by concrete nouns. There is one other thing to keep in mind about concrete nouns that isn’t obvious. Even extremely small things like bacteria and atoms use concrete nouns. Although you cannot see air, you can still feel it and so the word air is a concrete noun. If you can use any of your five senses to interact with something, that something will be referred to by a concrete noun. Of the two, concrete nouns are more common and are, generally, easier to understand. Let’s look closer at these two types of nouns to see if we can understand their differences.

Words like sadness, agility, philosophy, and ambitions are all abstract nouns. Intangible things that exist as ideas or concepts are referred to by abstract nouns. All of the living and nonliving physical objects in the universe are referred to by concrete nouns.Ībstract nouns are used to refer to everything else. Words like photograph, cologne, music, food, and snake are all concrete nouns. If you can see, smell, hear, taste, or touch something, that object is referred to by a concrete noun. One common way of understanding concrete nouns is that they refer to any person, place, or thing that you can experience with your five senses.

However, each of these words is an example of two distinct types of nouns that we use: concrete nouns and abstract nouns.Ī concrete nounis “a noun denoting something material and nonabstract.” By contrast, an abstract noun is “a noun denoting something immaterial and abstract.” So, what does this mean? If you’re already a noun expert (and guess what, if you can read this, you really already are!), you probably know that the words friend and friendship are both nouns. There are countless nouns in the English language, and we use them to refer to everything from bugs to galaxies. We use nouns to refer to the simple things in life like candy and the more complicated stuff like democracy. In grammar, we use nouns to refer to all of the friendly people, amazing places, and fascinating things around us.

What is abstract noun