Noun

Noun

Noun (also Adjective, Verb — informal) · /naʊn/

Definition

(Noun) a word that functions as the name of a person, place, thing, idea, quality, or action; one of the major parts of speech; a word that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, or as the object of a preposition; (Informal Verb) to noun — to use a word that is not normally a noun as a noun (nominalisation); (Adjective, attributive) relating to nouns: a noun phrase, noun clause.

Origin

From Old French non and Latin nomen (name, noun), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁nómn̥ (name) — one of the oldest and most widely distributed words in the Indo-European family. Cognate with English name, Greek onoma/onuma (name: as in anonymous, pseudonym, synonym), Sanskrit nāman, German Name, Russian имя (imya). The grammatical use — nomen as the word-class of naming words — being Roman grammarians' Latin translation of the Greek onoma, which Aristotle and later the Stoics used in their grammatical analyses.