Collins Cobuild English Grammar (9 page)

…a boy or girl with
intelligence
.
Make sure everyone has enough
food
and
drink
.
…new techniques in
industry
and
agriculture
.
I talked with people about
religion, death, marriage, money
, and
happiness
.

These nouns are called
uncountable nouns
.

noun–verb agreement

1.24
    When you use an uncountable noun as the subject of a verb, you use a singular form of the verb.

Love makes
you do strange things.
They believed that
poverty was
a threat to world peace.
Electricity is
potentially dangerous.

list of uncountable nouns

1.25
    Here is a list of some common uncountable nouns:

absence

access

age

agriculture

anger

atmosphere

beauty

behaviour

cancer

capacity

childhood

china

comfort

concern

confidence

courage

death

democracy

depression

design

duty

earth

education

electricity

energy

environment

equipment

evil

existence

experience

failure

faith

fashion

fear

finance

fire

flesh

food

freedom

fun

ground

growth

happiness

health

help

history

ice

independence

industry

insurance

intelligence

joy

justice

labour

loneliness

love

luck

magic

marriage

mercy

music

nature

paper

patience

peace

philosophy

pleasure

policy

poverty

power

pride

protection

purity

rain

reality

relief

religion

respect

rice

safety

salt

sand

security

silence

sleep

strength

snow

spite

status

stuff

teaching

technology

time

trade

training

transport

travel

trust

truth

violence

waste

water

wealth

weather

welfare

wind

work

worth

youth

BE CAREFUL

1.26
    There are some words that are uncountable nouns in English, but that refer to things that are considered countable in other languages.

Here is a list of the most common uncountable nouns of this type:

advice

baggage

furniture

hair

homework

information

knowledge

luggage

machinery

money

news

progress

research

spaghetti

traffic

quantifying:
some rice
,
a bowl of rice

1.27
    Although uncountable nouns refer to things that cannot be counted and are not used with numbers, you often want to talk about an amount of something that is expressed by an uncountable noun.

Sometimes, you can do this by putting an
indefinite determiner
such as
all
,
enough
,
little
, or
some
in front of the noun.

Do you have
enough
money?
There’s
some
chocolate cake over there.

For more information on indefinite determiners that can be used with uncountable nouns, see paragraph
1.225
.

You can also put a
quantity expression
in front of the noun. For example, when you refer to water you can say
drops of water
,
a cup of water
,
four gallons of water
, and so on.

The use of quantity expressions with uncountable nouns is explained in paragraphs
2.194
to
2.207
.

mass nouns

1.28
    When you are sure that your reader or hearer will understand that a quantity of something is being referred to, you do not need to use a quantity expression.

For example, in a restaurant you can ask for
three cups of coffee
, but you can also ask for
three coffees
because the person you are talking to will know that you mean
three cups of coffee
. In this way, the uncountable noun
coffee
has become countable.

Nouns used in this way are called
mass nouns
.

1.29
    Mass nouns are often used to refer to quantities of a particular kind of food or drink.

We spent two hours talking over
coffee
and biscuits in her study.
We stopped for
a coffee
at a small café.

1.30
    Similarly, some uncountable nouns can be mass nouns when they refer to types of something. For example,
cheese
is usually an uncountable noun but you can talk about
a large range of cheeses
.

…plentiful cheap
beer
.
…profits from low-alcohol
beers
.
We were not allowed to buy
wine
or spirits at lunch time.
We sell a wide variety of
wines
and liqueurs.

Mass nouns referring to different types of a substance are mainly used in technical contexts. For example
steel
is nearly always an uncountable noun, but in contexts where it is important to distinguish between different kinds of steel it can be a mass noun.

…imports of European
steel
.
…the use of small amounts of nitrogen in making certain
steels
.

list of mass nouns

1.31
    The following is a list of frequently used mass nouns:

adhesive

beer

brandy

bread

cake

cheese

claret

cloth