The Thing Is

There’s more to nouns than people, places, and things. Some nouns are countable, and some are not. Most nouns are common, but some are proper. There are mass nouns and collective nouns, attributive nouns and nouns that can function as verbs. Some even take on adverbial roles.

To test your knowledge of this essential part of speech, take the quiz.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Style guides sometimes disagree. Except for a few details that can be readily verified in standard dictionaries and encyclopedias, the answers in this quiz rely on the information in The Chicago Manual of Style.

[Editor’s note: This quiz relies on and links to the 17th edition of CMOS.]

Chicago Style Workout 71: Nouns

1. The noun river is

concrete

abstract

2. The word team is

a collective noun

a mass noun

3. The word luggage is

a collective noun

a mass noun

4. A noun that refers to something uncountable isn’t normally preceded by a or an.

True

False

5. A proper noun, unlike a common noun, is usually capitalized.

True

False

6. A proper noun that lends its name to a common noun is called

a loanword

an eponym

7. The articles a, an, and the are never used before a person’s name.

True

False

8. In English, most nouns are grammatically classified as either masculine or feminine.

True

False

9. Some nouns that look like they should be singular are in fact plural, and vice versa.

True

False

10. The noun home can also function as

an adjective

a verb

an adverb

all of the above

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“Mass noun” photo by sharafmaksumov / Adobe Stock.

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