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About This Quiz
Whether you're a science nerd or a math fanatic, it's hard to deny the importance of the English language. Knowing the differences between verbs and adverbs, for instance, can make or break your resume for a future career path. But while many of us grew up learning about the English subject, it's still pretty difficult to master. After all, what the heck is a preposition? Or a conjunction? Well, it would take too long to explain the different "parts of speech," so today, we're going to focus on just one of them: nouns!
Nouns are pretty easy to learn about, right? We were all taught that nouns refer to people, places or things, but there are many different types of nouns. So generally, many nouns can be categorized as common nouns, like states, mountains or dogs. But what if we're talking about California, Mount Everest or a dog named Spunky? Well, then these would all be proper nouns since we're talking about names of specific things. There are also countable, singular, collective, abstract and possessive nouns, and we're going to talk about all of them in this educational quiz. So, we have just one question: Are you ready to get your noun game on?
Abstract
Love is a pretty "abstract" concept, don't you think? It's also an abstract noun, which means you can't interact with it using your senses. These types of nouns also refer to emotions and feelings.
Collective
Common
Concrete
None of these
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I
Museum of Modern Art
Proper nouns refer to specific people, places or events, some of which are important in our society. The Museum of Modern Art is an example of a proper noun, as is the Sahara Desert.
Friend
Today
Going
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None of these
Compound
Proper
Predicate
Concrete
A concrete noun refers to something you can physically touch with you hands or perceive with your senses. You can touch a hairbrush and see it with your eyes, so that makes it a concrete noun.
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Proper noun
It's both.
Common noun
If we were talking about a specific country, like Russia or Armenia, then this would be a proper noun. But since a country refers to a more general concept, it would be a common noun.
It's neither.
I have no idea.
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Open compound noun
Closed compound noun
Do you how there's no space in between the two words that make up the word "meatball"? A compound noun combines two words to form a single word.
Hyphenated compound noun
Abstract noun
Proper noun
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Pronoun
Compound
Concrete
Verbal
Collective
A collective noun refers to a word that signifies a group of things. So in this context, a choir is made up of a group of people, which collectively makes it one whole choir group.
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South America
Jason
Empire State Building
Board of members
"Board of members" is a pretty vague compound noun here. It's not referring to a specific group of "board of members," so it could be anyone. Thus, that's what makes it a common noun and not a proper one.
Yosemite
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Hyphenated compound noun
See that little dash symbol in between the words "paper" and "clip"? That's a hyphen, and it's used to connect two or more words together. Other examples of hyphenated compound nouns are forget-me-not and father-in-law.
Closed compound noun
Open compound noun
Pronoun
Collective
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Ours
Me
You
Itself
Town
The word "town" is a common noun, not a pronoun. A pronoun usually refers to someone or something in a sentence, without using its proper noun form. For instance, "James likes ice cream, so he went to buy some." "He" is the pronoun here, and it refers to the proper noun, James.
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Non-countable
The word "knowledge" is considered to be a non-countable noun. You can't really count knowledge. It can't be measured literally, like having two oranges or three cats.
Countable
It's not a noun.
It shouldn't be in the countable category.
Either one, depending on the context.
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Teacher
Student
Actress
The word "actress" is a gender-specific noun because it refers to the female version of "actor." In other words, a woman in the acting industry is called an actress, while a male in the same industry is an actor.
Employee
Flower
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Attack
Metal
Verbal nouns are formed using verbs. Take "decision," for example. It comes from the verb "to decide," but we could use it in this sentence: "The candidate has not yet made his decision." The word "metal" in this question is a common noun.
Decision
Arrival
Building
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Gerund
Proper
Concrete
Abstract
You can't physically touch or see "parenthood," which makes it an abstract concept (and thus, an abstract noun). Other examples would be the words "bravery," "courage" and "joy."
Collective
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Laugh
Team
Bread
Pickpocket
Swimming
Gerunds are formed from verbs like start, stop or change. When you add an "-ing" at the end, then it becomes a gerund. For example, "Swimming in the lake today is a great idea" has the gerund "swimming."
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Closed compound noun
Hyphenated compound noun
It's not a noun.
Open compound noun
The word "ice cream" is an open compound noun because of that space between "ice" and "cream." We're combining two words — ice and cream — to make one unit.
Abstract noun
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Countable noun
Compound noun
Possessive noun
This cat belongs to Timmy, which makes this noun possessive. A possessive noun shows that someone owns something. For example, "Mary's jacket is red" or "Beth's water bottle is small."
Plural noun
Proper noun
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Plural
Possessive
Countable
The word "pencil" is a countable noun because you can literally count how many you have, such as one or two pencils. Other examples of countable nouns include "cup," "phone" and "pen."
Collective
Uncountable
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Cactus
All the words in this list are plural nouns, except for cactus. Its plural form is actually cacti, though some people also say cactuses. And believe it or not, "oxen" is the plural form of "ox!"
Women
Leaves
Heroes
Oxen
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Milk
Food
Rain
Rice
All of the above.
All of these words are considered to be uncountable nouns because you can't count them physically. But if you have lots of time on your hands, then maybe you could count some rice.
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Snowflake: compound noun
Train: countable noun
Fear: abstract noun
Ocean: common noun
Walt Disney: collective noun
Walt Disney was known for many classics, such as "Dumbo" and "Fantasia," but he's also a proper noun. This is because proper nouns signify specific people, places and things — and we don't mean just important ones like Walt Disney!
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False
True
The word "moose" is one of those rare exceptions in the English language where it doesn't have a set plural form. Some people use the word "meese," but that's more of a slang word.
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Four
One
Two
Three
There are three nouns in this sentence, which are "lady," "necklace" and "heart." They are all common nouns because they don't refer to specific people or things.
Five
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Crisis
Crisis is not a compound noun because it's not a combination of two or more words. "Anymore," for instance, contains the words "any" and "more," and "nobody" is a combination of "no" and "body."
Nobody
Onset
Airline
Anymore
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Love
None of these
There are actually no concrete nouns in this sentence. A concrete noun is a word that involves one or more of your five senses. Since you can't literally perceive the nouns in this sentence, none of them are concrete.
Funny
Dating
Realm
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It's not a noun.
Abstract noun
We may have documents and textbooks about history, but we can't perceive the actual word using sight, hearing or touch. It's an abstract concept, which means that it's an abstract noun.
Proper noun
Common noun
Concrete noun
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Itself
Which
Where
This
This type of pronoun is used to demonstrate something in a sentence. For example, "This shirt is blue," or "These oranges are organic." You could also say "Are those necklaces yours?"
Your
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Several
"Several" is an indefinite pronoun because it doesn't involve specific people, places or things. It's also plural because singular pronouns end in "thing," "one" or "body," such as "anything" or "everybody."
Everything
Much
Anything
Enough
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Place
Person
Idea
If a specific person was named "Faith," then this would be a proper noun. But in this context, we're talking about "faith" as an idea. It's also not really a "thing," since you can't physically touch it.
Thing
Animal
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Yet
Go
You
Hey
Store
The word "store" is the noun in this sentence because it's referring to a place (specifically, it's a common noun). "Yet" is an adverb, "you" is a pronoun, "go" is a verb and "hey" is an interjection.
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True
Generally, people use the word "blonde" to describe yellow hair on either a man or a woman. But "blonde" actually refers to a woman with this type of hair, while "blond" denotes a male.
False
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Axisis
Axi
Axises
Axis
Axes
The word "axis" is a singular noun that describes imaginary lines in astronomy or fixed lines in mathematics (among several other definitions, depending on the educational context). Its proper plural form would be "axes."
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Countable
Compound
Collective
You've probably heard the term, "It takes a village ..." The word "village" in this context is a collective noun because it refers to a group or a collection of something. In this case, it would be a group of people. Other collective nouns include "family" and "band."
Plural
Proper
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Verb + verb = compound noun
Two verbs don't make a specific type of noun, but if you combine a certain verb with a noun, then it becomes a compound noun. Examples of this include haircut and sunrise.
Adjective + noun = compound noun
verb + noun = compound noun
Noun + noun = compound noun
Noun + verb = compound noun
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Neither
I'm not sure.
Both
Gerund
Verbal nouns and gerunds are pretty similar, but there's a key difference, and that has to do with the word's verbal properties. Verbal nouns have none while gerunds have some,. The word "paying" is derived from a verb.
Verbal noun
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Countable
Uncountable
The word "luggage" is actually considered to be an uncountable noun. Here's a trick: If a word has no plural version of it, then it's considered to be uncountable. For example, you can't say "luggages" when referring to multiple pieces of luggage.
Both, depending on the context.
Neither
I'm not sure.
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You Got:
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