Nouns are names for people, places, things, and abstract concepts. Concrete nouns can be sensed, while abstract nouns cannot, but still have identities. Intelligence and events are examples of abstract nouns, while imagination and phantasmagoria are not real but still nameable. Without language, names would not exist, and abstract nouns are where concrete nouns exist.
As any schoolboy knows, nouns are the names we use for people, places and things. And some schoolchildren know that nouns also refer to abstractions such as ideas, feelings, events or other intangible things. Abstract nouns are words for things that cannot be perceived using the five senses, but are still things in that they have central identities or characteristics.
It’s easy to understand that chairs are names because people, who are also names, sit on them before dining. Dinner is another noun, as are dishes that keep dinner from falling onto the table, which is yet another noun. Names that can be recognized sensorially because they exist as objects in the three-dimensional world are more precisely called concrete names. They have physical presences that can be experienced through the five senses.
Life would be boring, however, if the world’s talkers confined themselves to conversations only about things that can be picked up, stroked, worn, or otherwise directly experienced. Humans pride themselves on their intelligence, which is itself an abstract rather than a concrete noun. Intelligence cannot be seen or heard. It has no scent or texture, and it doesn’t taste like anything, but it’s still an abstract noun that names something that most people would say is real, knowable, and maybe even measurable.
Even the events are very real; even as people create, walk through, and document them through discussion or writing, the event itself is abstract. A celebration, a wedding and a battle are at once very real to the participants but purely conceptual in that, even in their midst, they cannot be touched. They are real enough to be named and remembered, however, sometimes for years to come.
Not all abstract nouns name real, knowable things. Imagination – an abstract noun – allows entities that are nothing but phantasmagoria – another abstract noun – to leap to mind through images – it is true; this is another abstract noun. The writer who describes the bedraggled wings of an exhausted angel is not naming the actual details of something truly real. However, since these details, and the angel himself, are nameable, there is a sense that they are also knowable.
Without the abstraction of language, names themselves would not exist. Things would, but only as themselves. Nameless, they could not be held in the mind, recalled in conversation, or reflected in memory. Ironically, abstract nouns are the invisible playing field where their more concrete siblings run wild.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
