Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The part of speech that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action and can function as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or an appositive.
- n. Any of the words belonging to this part of speech, such as neighbor, window, happiness, or negotiation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In grammar, a name; a word that denotes a thing, material or immaterial; a part of speech that admits of being used as subject or object of a verb, or of being governed by a preposition. Any part of speech, or phrase, or clause thus used is a noun, or the equivalent of a noun, or used as a noun: thus, he is prodigal of ifs and buts; fare well is a mournful sound; that he is gone is true enough. Nouns are called proper, common, collective, abstract, etc. (See these words.) The older usage, and less commonly the later, make the word noun include both the noun and the adjective, distinguishing the former as noun substantive and the latter as noun adjective. Abbreviated n.
Wiktionary
- n. grammar A word that can be used to refer to a person, animal, place, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea; one of the basic parts of speech in many languages, including English.
- v. transitive To convert a word to a noun.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Gram.) A word used as the designation or appellation of a creature or thing, existing in fact or in thought; a substantive.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action
- n. the word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition
Etymologies
- From Anglo-Norman noun, non, nom, from Latin nōmen ("name"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, name, noun, from Anglo-Norman, from Latin nōmen (translation of Greek onoma, name, noun); see nŏ̄-men- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“A noun signifying many, is called a _collective noun_, or _noun of multitude_; as, the _people_, the _army_.”
“Surely, in this instance, the plural noun "freshes" is not formed from any such singular noun as "_fresh_," but directly from the adjective, which latter does not seem to have been ever used as a singular _noun_.”
“Find them, and give the reason.] [Footnote 2: When a noun is modified by both a genitive and an adjective, a favorite order of words is _adjective, genitive, noun_.] [Footnote 3: A modifying genitive often stands between a preposition and its object.] *****”
“Is the adjective skeevy somehow related to the slang noun for underwear, skivvies?”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“That quality of crawling stealthily is the basis of the slang noun creep.”
“Shvitz as a noun is a steambath, as Mr. el-Gamal said.”
“Affect as a noun is a technical term in psychology that basically means emotion.”
“The underlying source of this noun is an ancient Bantu verb that in fact meant "to trap.”
“Meanwhile, the meaning of the slang noun freak—first recorded in Finley Peter Dunne’s 1895 “Mr. Dooley” in the Chicago Evening Post as “the deluded ol’ freak“—has also been getting quirkier with the passage of time.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“Yes, esperanza, pinche as a noun is still in use in Spain and has been extended to the lowest level of help in many trades, but in México it is primarily an adjective.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘noun’.
-
Language
word, sentence, novel, book, novella, vignette, memoir, anthology, paragraph, stanza, poem, haiku and 123 more...
-
Roots
act, aer, ambul, ami, amo, anim, ann, enn, arch, rcha, rchae, archi and 139 more...
-
Word Words
Words that describe other words
adverb, verb, noun, adjective, pronoun, Synonym, antonym, phrase, dictionary, grammar, word, passage and 19 more...
-
EN - autological words and phrases
Words and phrases expressing a property which they also possess themselves: "noun" is a noun, "English" is English, etc. If W means W AND W is (a) W, then W is an autological item. Very often but n...
noun, polysyllabic, abbrv., word, common, English, lovely, sesquipedalian, heterological, short, term, terminus technicus and 63 more...
-
Linguistic terminology
phonics, phonology, morphology, morphemes, metathesis, allomorphs, phonemes, linguistics, vowel, consonant, noun, pronoun and 6 more...
-
Prep my Lang
Collection of my wordnik word search
equivocal, anomaly, proliferate, assimilate, obscure, aberration, parse, circumnavigate, circumvent, decipher, prose, impasse and 94 more...
-
zzyyxx's Words
plethora, drout, functional, rye, wring, doubt, cognative, weird, gnaw, surcease, rend, languish and 438 more...
-
Autological Word Collection
The title says it all
-
Words about words
Most of these describe word patterns or relationships between words.
panvocalic, palindrome, anagram, transposition, antigram, reversal, isogram, alternade, trinade, beheadment, decapitation, apheresis and 149 more...
-
English grammar
terms relevant to English grammar
phrase, clause, sentence, complement, modifier, adjunct, specifier, constituent, syntax, bar level, supplement, coordination and 285 more...
-
linguistics
words associated with language and linguistics
subjunctive, grammar, accent, adjective, adverb, bilingual, case, conjugation, consonant, creole, dialect, diphthong and 33 more...
-
Reflexive words
Words that describe themselves (at least as displayed below). Also called autological or homological words, as listed by dann and tthorley.
sereneness, undulate, fidgety, fijiti, narrow, this, splendacious, ugly, short, terse, sesquipedalian, spellable and 67 more...
-
Homological (or Autological) Words
A list of homological (self-describing) words
short, terse, pronounceable, pentasyllabic, writable, typed, sesquipedalian, word, alphanumeric, letters, exists, trochee and 4 more...
-
Adofoadom
Grammatical terms.
verbal, noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, interjection, diction, conjunction, syntax, ornamental
-
Korniko's Words
quixotic, existential, archaic, black, cheap, laser, jungle, tropical, listed, festive, survey, blind and 87 more...
-
Adofoadom
Grammatical terms.
Conjunction, noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, syntax., verbal, diction and 5 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for noun.

milosrdenstvi "...rather than any good action should walk through the world like an unappropriated adjective in an ill-arranged sentence, he is always willing to stand noun substantive to it himself."
-- Walter Scott, "Rob Roy" Jul 8, 2011