Collective nouns are countable nouns that denote groups of people, objects, or things. A collective noun differs from a mass noun (a noun that cannot be counted—e.g., love, water, evidence) because it can be pluralized. [Read more...]
Agent and recipient nouns
An agent noun denotes a person who performs an action. Most agent nouns end in either –er (standard) or –or (for words derived directly from Latin). A recipient noun denotes a person who receives an action. Recipient nouns usually have the suffix –ee, which technically means one to whom. [Read more...]
Irregular plural nouns
In English, there are hundreds of nouns that don’t follow the standard rules for pluralization. There are no easy ways to remember them, so they generally have to be memorized. [Read more...]
Participles
Participles are versatile adjectives (sometimes adverbs) formed by adding -ing or -ed to the stem of an infinitive verb. [Read more...]
Predicate nominatives
A predicate nominative is a noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and refers to the subject of the verb. [Read more...]
Gerunds
When the -ing form of a verb acts as a noun, it is a gerund. Gerunds are identical to but different from present participles, which are -ing verbs that function as adjectives. For example, bleeding is a gerund when it’s a noun (e.g., stop the bleeding) and a present participle when it functions as an adjective (e.g., the bleeding man). So, when we see the word bleeding on its own, it’s impossible to say whether it is a gerund or a present participle. It can’t be both, but we need context to determine which it is. [Read more...]
Nouns as adjectives
Nouns sometimes function as adjectives. For example, in each of these phrases, the first word is usually a noun but here functions as an adjective modifying the second word: city government, article writer, bicycle thief, Sunday picnic, pumpkin pie. [Read more...]
Possessive nouns
1. Singular possessives: To form a possessive of a singular noun or pronoun, add -‘s, even when the original word ends with s (for example: Mr. Atkins’s car, the process’s steps, Bill Gates’s billions, the waitress’s tips, Congress’s foot-dragging). [Read more...]