What does noun mean?
Word: Noun
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Noun means a word that names a person, place, thing, idea or feeling, such as teacher, Delhi, pencil, honesty or joy.
Synonyms: naming word
Word origin: Came into English through Old French from the Latin nomen, 'name'.
How do you spell noun?
Syllables: noun
Tricky part: The vowel sound is spelt ou, as in loud and cloud. Students who spell by ear sometimes write nown, borrowing the ow of town.
Watch out for: nown, noune, nawn
Memory tip: Think of a noun you use every day, house: noun spells its vowel sound with the same ou.
Noun in a sentence
Example 1: Underline the noun in each sentence before you start the exercise.
Example 2: Kolkata, river and kindness are all nouns.
Example 3: My little brother thinks every noun must be something you can touch.
Fun Fact
German writes every noun with a capital letter, so a German sentence about a dog, a table and a window would capitalise all three.
Practise the CREST Way
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the meaning of the only correctly spelt word:
1. alfabet 2. vowell 3. noun 4. sylable
a) a speech sound made with the breath flowing freely, such as a or o
b) a single beat of sound in a word, like ba in banana
c) the part of speech that names someone or something
d) the full set of letters used to write a language
Show answer
c) the part of speech that names someone or something. Noun is the only one spelt right; the others should read vowel, syllable and alphabet.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the word in the sentence and choose it:
A proper ounn always begins with a capital letter.
a) none
b) noun
c) noon
d) known
Show answer
b) noun. Noon and none have no u, and known needs a k and a w; o, u and two n's spell noun.
Word Makeup
Only one of these words takes the prefix pro to make a real word. Choose it:
pro
a) clause
b) noun
c) article
d) phrase
Show answer
b) noun. Pro + noun makes pronoun, a word such as she or it that stands in for a noun; prophrase, proarticle and proclause are not words.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
Our teacher asked us to circle every abstract noun in the passage, such as courage, freedom and happyness.
a) courage
b) noun
c) passage
d) happyness
Show answer
d) happyness. Happy changes its y to i before ness, so the word is happiness.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which word in this sentence is a noun: The tired horse slept soundly?
a) tired
b) slept
c) soundly
d) horse
Show answer
d) horse
2. A collective noun names ____.
a) a group of people, animals or things
b) the way in which something is done
c) an action done by many people together
d) a feeling shared by a whole crowd
Show answer
a) a group of people, animals or things
