Countable and Uncountable Nouns
1. Countable nouns
Countable nouns are things which can be counted like ‘chair’, ‘apple’ or ‘girl’. They usually add an ‘s’ when we make a plural: one boy, two boys. They can be used with either a singular or a plural verb: one boy jumps, two boys jump.
Here are some examples:
- one chair
- two chairs
- one car
- two cars
2. Uncountable nouns
Uncountable nouns are usually things which cannot easily be counted, like ‘love’, ‘advice’ or ‘water’. Uncountable nouns do not make a plural or change their form, and they are always used with a singular verb. We can’t say one advice, two advice.These nouns cannot be combined with numbers.
- love
- butter
- weather
- money
- wine
- sugar
If you want to express a quantity, you have to use a unit phrase e.g. a glass of wine, a spoon of sugar.
Some examples of units are
| Uncountable Noun | Unit |
|---|---|
| information | a piece of information |
| bread | a slice of bread |
| luck | a bit of luck |
| grass | a blade of grass |
| poetry | a poem |
3. Nouns both Countable and Uncountable
Some nouns can be countable or uncountable depending on the context
Here are some examples:
hair – hairs
- You’ve got a hair in your soup. (A countable number.)
- Your hair looks lovely. (Here you think of the hairstyle, too many hairs to count.)
paper – papers
- I bought a paper this morning ( A specific newspaper.)
- I need some paper (Uncountable as paper in general.)