mass noun

(redirected from mass nouns)
Also found in: Thesaurus.

uncountable noun

Nouns that cannot be divided or counted as individual elements or separate parts are called uncountable nouns (also known as mass nouns or non-count nouns). These can be tangible objects (such as substances or collective categories of things), or intangible or abstract things, such as concepts or ideas. Nouns that can be divided are called countable nouns, or simply count nouns.

mass noun

A noun, such as furniture, water, or honesty, that cannot be modified by the indefinite article, does not occur in the plural, and is often preceded by modifiers such as some or much or by a phrase containing a unit of measurement. Some nouns can function both as mass nouns (There are sixty boxes of tile in the warehouse) and as count nouns (We had to cut a tile in half to fit the end of the row). Also called noncount noun. See Usage Note at collective noun.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

mass noun

(Linguistics) a noun that refers to an extended substance rather than to each of a set of isolable objects, as, for example, water as opposed to lake. In English when used indefinitely they are characteristically preceded by some rather than a or an; they do not have normal plural forms. Compare count noun

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

mass′ noun`

a noun, as water, electricity, or happiness, that typically refers to an indefinitely divisible substance or an abstract notion and that in English cannot be used, in such a sense, with the indefinite article or in the plural. Compare count noun.

[1930–35]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Switch to new thesaurus

Noun

mass noun - a noun that does not form plurals

noun - a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action

Translations

denombre incontablesustancia

ainesana

nom massif

niet-telbaar substantiefniet-telbaar zelfstandig naamwoord

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

Now, the words little and a little are usually used for uncountable or no-count or mass nouns. The expression a little is used when the quantity under consideration is small but manageable or can serve some desirable purpose.

So Many Votes

A few examples of mass nouns are "knowledge," "furniture" and "weather."

Mass media 101: Is it plural or not?

We have two kinds of nouns denoting physical things; individual nouns, and mass nouns, e.g., water, milk, wood, granite, sand, flour, meat.

THE RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE

A recently popular philosophical view of process is as something that is referred to with mass nouns and not count nouns.

Mind: Vol. 125, No. 497, January 2016

Countable nouns are presented as count nouns in subject literature, and uncountable nouns are viewed as mass nouns (see Jespersen 1924 for mass words), whose category membership "depends partly on the inherent properties of their referents and partly on cultural usage" (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2004: 1069).

A cognitive comparison of nouns--English v Polish

True, mass nouns, for example, are mostly uncountable both in English and Hungarian (e.g.

The function of the singular form of nouns in the Hungarian language

The reason for selecting these language groups is because each language is typologically very different: Spanish has definite and indefinite articles, and uses the definite article for plural and mass nouns in subject and object positions; Turkish only has an indefinite article; Japanese has no articles.

L1 transfer in article selection for generic reference by Spanish, Turkish and Japanese L2 learners

In 'traditional 'West Country' (Southwest) dialects and (West-Country based) Newfoundland English [...] neuter pronouns are traditionally only employed for mass nouns, while count nouns trigger masculine forms' (Wagner 2003, abstract: 1).

'I'll cross dat brig whin I come til him': grammatical gender in the Orkney and Shetland dialects of Scots

To these nouns mainly belong mass nouns such as kil 'iron' or hi: 'milk' that lack a normal plural form.

Variation in stem formation in Tsezic languages/Varijacija u tvorbi osnove u cezskim jezicima

The concrete non-count nouns, in turn, divide into mass nouns (e.g., 'steel', 'light') and 'pseudo-mass nouns' (e.g., 'furniture').