NOUN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does noun mean? 

• NOUN (noun)
  The noun NOUN has 2 senses:

1. a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action

2. the word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition

  Familiarity information: NOUN used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NOUN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("noun" is a kind of...):

content word; open-class word (a word to which an independent meaning can be assigned)

substantive (any word or group of words functioning as a noun)

Meronyms (parts of "noun"):

noun (the word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "noun"):

collective noun (a noun that is singular in form but refers to a group of people or things)

mass noun (a noun that does not form plurals)

count noun (a noun that forms plurals)

generic noun (a noun that does not specify either masculine or feminine gender)

proper name; proper noun (a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized)

common noun (a noun that denotes any or all members of a class)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("noun" is a kind of...):

major form class (any of the major parts of speech of traditional grammar)

Holonyms ("noun" is a part of...):

noun (a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action)

Holonyms ("noun" is a member of...):

declension (the inflection of nouns and pronouns and adjectives in Indo-European languages)

 Context examples 

This other, however, prints ‘match’ when it should have been ‘matches.’ I can imagine that the word was taken out of a dictionary, which would give the noun but not the plural.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The NCI term type designation for the adjectival form of a noun.

(AD Term Type, NCI Thesaurus)

He assured me that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"You're very polite but I belong to another generation," he announced solemnly. "You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your—" He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand—"As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won't impose myself on you any longer."

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)