V World

The Count Noun

Nouns name people, places, and things. Many nouns have both singular and plural forms. If you can add a number to the front of a noun and put an -s at the end of it, you have a count noun. Check out these examples:
Beatrice offered Jeremy a chocolate-chip cookie.
Jeremy, an impolite pig, grabbed all seventeen cookies off of the plate.

Cookie is a count noun. You can have one cookie, or you can be a pig like Jeremy and have seventeen cookies.

Remember that some nouns are noncount.

You cannot count all nouns. To make noncount nouns plural would be illogical. Read the following sentence:

Jeremy apologized for his rudeness, but his growling stomach stopped him from returning any of the cookies to the plate.

Rudeness is an example of a noncount noun. Jeremy does not have five rudenesses. Such a statement would make absolutely no sense!