NOUNS.

1. A Noun is a name, or any word or words used as a name.

Ball, house, fish, John, Mary, are all names, and are therefore nouns.

“To walk in the open air is pleasant in summer evenings.” The two words to walk are used as the name of an action; to walk is therefore a noun.

The word noun comes from the Latin nomen, a name. From this word we have also nominal, denominate, denomination, etc.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF NOUNS.

2. Nouns are of two classes—Proper and Common.

3. A proper noun is the name of an individual, as an individual, and not as one of a class.

John, Mary, London, Birmingham, Shakespeare, Milton, are all proper nouns.

The word proper comes from the Latin proprius, one’s own. Hence a proper noun is, in relation to one person, one’s own name. From the same word we have appropriate, to make one’s own; expropriate, etc.

(i) Proper nouns are always written with a capital letter at the beginning; and so also are the words derived from them. Thus we write France, French, Frenchified; Milton, Miltonic; Shakespeare, Shakespearian.

(ii) Proper nouns, as such, have no meaning. They are merely marks to indicate a special person or place. They had, however, originally a meaning. The persons now called Armstrong, Smith, Greathead, no doubt had ancestors who were strong in the arm, who did the work of smiths, or who had large heads.

(iii) A proper noun may be used as a common noun, when it is employed not to mark an individual, but to indicate one of a class. Thus we can say, “He is the Milton of his age,” meaning by this that he possesses the qualities which all those poets have who are like Milton.

(iv) We can also speak of “the Howards,” “the Smiths,” meaning a number of persons who are called Howard or who are called Smith.

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4. A common noun is the name of a person, place, or thing, considered not merely as an individual, but as one of a class. Horse, town, boy, table, are common nouns.

The word common comes from the Lat. communis, “shared by several”; and we find it also in community, commonalty, etc.

(i) A common noun is so called because it belongs in common to all the persons, places, or things in the same class.

(ii) The name rabbit marks off, or distinguishes, that animal from all other animals; but it does not distinguish one rabbit from another—it is common to all animals of the class. Hence we may say: a common noun distinguishes from without; but it does not distinguish within its own bounds.

(iii) Common nouns have a meaning; proper nouns have not. The latter may have a meaning; but the meaning is generally not appropriate. Thus persons called Whitehead and Longshanks may be dark and short. Hence such names are merely signs, and not significant marks

 5. Common nouns are generally subdivided into—

(i) Class-names.

(ii) Collective nouns.

(iii) Abstract nouns.

(i) Under class-names are included not only ordinary names, but also the names of materials—as tea, sugar, wheat, water. The names of materials can be used in the plural when different kinds of the material are meant. Thus we say “fine teas,” “coarse sugars,” when we mean fine kinds of tea, etc.

(ii) A collective noun is the name of a collection of persons or things, looked upon by the mind as one. Thus we say committee, parliament, crowd; and think of these collections of persons as each one body.

(iii) An abstract noun is the name of a quality, action, or state, considered in itself, and as abstracted from the thing or person in which it really exists. Thus, we see a number of lazy persons, and think of laziness as a quality in itself, abstracted from the persons. (From Lat. abs, from; tractus, drawn.)

(a) The names of arts and sciences are abstract nouns, because they are the names of processes of thought, considered apart and abstracted from the persons who practise them. Thus, music, painting, grammar, chemistry, astronomy, are abstract nouns.

(iv) Abstract nouns are (a) derived from adjectives, as hardness, dullness, sloth, from hard, dull, and slow; or (b) from verbs, as growth, thought, from grow and think.

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(v) Abstract nouns are sometimes used as collective nouns. Thus we say “the nobility and gentry” for “the nobles and gentlemen” of the land.

(vi) Abstract nouns are formed from other words by the addition of such endings as ness, th, ery, hood, head, etc.

6. The following is a summary of the divisions of nouns:—

THE INFLEXIONS OF NOUNS.

7. Nouns can be inflected or changed. They are inflected to indicate Gender, Number, and Case.

We must not, however, forget that differences of gender, number, or case are not always indicated by inflexion.

Inflexio is a Latin word which means bending. An inflexion, therefore, is a bending away from the ordinary form of the word.

GENDER.

8. Gender is, in grammar, the mode of distinguishing sex by the aid of words, prefixes, or suffixes.

The word gender comes from the Lat. genus, generis (Fr. genre), a kind or sort. We have the same word in generic, general, etc. (The d in gender is no organic or true part of the word; it has been inserted as a kind of cushion between the n and the r.)

(i) Names of males are said to be of the masculine gender, as master, lord, Harry. Lat. mas, a male.

(ii) Names of females are of the feminine gender, as mistress, lady, Harriet. Lat. femina, a woman. (From the same word we have effeminate, etc.)

(iii) Names of things without sex are of the neuter gender, as head, tree, London. Lat. neuter, neither. (From the same word we have neutral, neutrality.)

(iv) Names of animals, the sex of which is not indicated, are said to be of the common gender. Thus, sheep, bird, hawk, parent, servant, are common, because they may be of either gender.

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(v) We may sum up thus:—

(vi) If we personify things, passions, powers, or natural forces, we may make them either masculine or feminine. Thus the Sun, Time, the Ocean, Anger, War, a river, are generally made masculine. On the other hand, the Moon, the Earth (“Mother Earth”), Virtue, a ship, Religion, Pity, Peace, are generally spoken of as feminine.

(vii) Sex is a distinction between animals; gender a distinction between nouns. In Old English, nouns ending in dom, as freedom, were masculine; nouns in ness, as goodness, feminine; and nouns in en, as maiden, chicken, always neuter. But we have lost all these distinctions, and, in modern English, gender always follows sex.

9. There are three ways of marking gender:—

(i) By the use of Suffixes.

(ii) By Prefixes (or by Composition).

(iii) By using distinct words for the names of the male and female.
 

I. GENDER MARKED BY SUFFIXES.

 A. Purely English or Teutonic Suffixes.

 10. There are now in our language only two purely English suffixes used to mark the feminine gender, and these are used in only two words. The two endings are en and ster, and the two words are vixen and spinster.

(i) Vixen is the feminine of fox; and spinster of spinner (spinder or spinther, which, later on, became spider). King Alfred, in his writings, speaks of “the spear-side and the spindle-side of a house” — meaning the men and the women.

(ii) Ster was used as a feminine suffix very largely in Old English. Thus, webster was a woman-weaver; baxter (or bagster), a female baker; hoppester, a woman-dancer; redester, a woman-reader; huckster, a female hawker (travelling merchant); and so on.

(iii) In Ancient English (Anglo-Saxon) the masculine ending was a, and the feminine e, as in wicca, wicce, witch. Hence we find the names of many Saxon kings ending in a, as Isa, Offa, Penda, etc.

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B. Latin and French Suffixes.

11. The chief feminine ending which we have received from the French is ess (Latin, issa). This is also the only feminine suffix with a living force at the present day—the only suffix we could add to any new word that might be adopted by us from a foreign source.

12. The following are nouns whose feminines end in ess:—

It will be noticed that, besides adding ess, some of the letters undergo change or are thrown out altogether.

There are other feminine suffixes of a foreign origin, such as ine, a, and trix.

(i) ine is a Greek ending, and is found in heroine. A similar ending in landgravine and margravine, the feminines of landgrave (a German count) and margrave (a lord of the Mark or of marches), is German.

(ii) a is an Italian or Spanish ending, and is found in donna (the feminine of Don, a gentleman), infanta (= the child, the heiress to the crown of Spain), sultana, and signora (the feminine of Signor, the Italian for Senior, elder, which we have compressed into Sir).

(iii) trix is a purely Latin ending, and is found only in those words that have come to us directly from Latin; as testator, testatrix (a person who has mad a will), executor, executrix (a person who carries out the directions of a will).

II. GENDER INDICATED BY PREFIXES (OR BY COMPOSITION).

13. The distinction between the masculine and the feminine gender is indicated by using such words as man, maid — bull, cow — he, she — cock, hen, as prefixes to the nouns mentioned. In the oldest English, carl and cwen (= queen) were employed to mark gender; and carl-fugol is = cock-fowl, cwen-fugol = hen-fowl.

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14. The following are the most important words of this kind:—

(i) In the time of Shakespeare, he and she were used as nouns. We find such phrases as “The proudest he,” “The fairest she,” “That not impossible she.”

III. GENDER INDICATED BY DIFFERENT WORDS

15. The use of different words for the masculine and the feminine does not really belong to grammatical gender. It may be well, however, to note some of the most important:—

(i) Bachelor (lit., a cow-boy), from Low Lat. baccalarius; from bacca, Low Lat. for vacca, a cow. Hence also vaccination.

(ii) Girl, from Low German gör, a child, by the addition of the diminutive l.

(iii) Filly, the dim. of foal. (When a syllable is added, the previous vowel is often modified: as in cat, kitten; cock, chicken; cook, kitchen.)

(iv) Drake, formerly endrake; end = duck, and rake = king. The word therefore means king of the ducks. (The word rake appears in another form in the ric of bishopric = the ric or kingdom or domain of a bishop.)

(v) Drone, from the droning sound it makes.

(vi) Earl, from A.S. eorl, a warrior. Countess comes from the French word comtesse.

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(vii) Father=feeder; cognate of fat, food, feed, fodder, foster, etc.

(viii) Goose; in the oldest A.S. gans; Gandr-a (the a being the sign of the masc.). Hence gander, the d being inserted as a cushion between n and r, as in thunder, gender, etc.

(ix) Hart = the horned one.

(x) Mare, the fem. of A.S. mearh, a horse. Hence also marshal, which at first meant horse-servant.

(xi) Husband, from Icelandic, husbondi, the master of the house. A farmer in Norway is called a bonder.

(xii) King, a contraction of A.S. cyning, son of the kin or tribe.

(xiii) Lord, a contraction of A.S. hláford—from hláf, a loaf, and weard, a ward or keeper.

(xiv) Lady, a contraction of A.S. hlaéfdige, a loaf-kneader.

(xv) The old A.S. words were nefa, nefe.

(xvi) Woman = wife-man. The pronunciation of women (wimmen) comes nearer to the old form of the word. See note on (iii).

(xvii) Sir, from Lat. senior, elder.

(xviii) Madam, from Lat. Mea domina (through the French Ma dame) = my lady.

(xix) Daughter = milker. Connected with dug.

(xx) Wizard, from old French guiscart, prudent. Witch has no connection with wizard.

16. All feminine nouns are formed from the masculine, with four exceptions: bridegroom, widower, gander, and drake, which come respectively from bride, widow, goose, and duck.

(i) Bridegroom was in A.S. brýdguma = the bride’s man. (Guma is a cognate of the Lat. hom-o, a man—whence humanity.)

(ii) Widower. The old masc. was widuwa; the fem. widuwe. It was then forgotten that widuwa was a masculine, and a new masculine had to be formed from widuwe.

NUMBER.

17. Number is, in nouns, the mode of indicating whether we are speaking of one thing or of more.

18. The English language, like most modern languages, has two numbers: the singular and the plural.

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(i) Singular comes from the Lat. singuli, one by one; plural, from the Lat. plures, more (than one).

(ii) Mr Barnes, the eminent Dorsetshire poet, who has written an excellent grammar, called ‘Speech-craft,’ calls them onely and somely.

 19. There are three chief ways of forming the plural in English:—

(i) By adding es or s to the singular.

(ii) By adding en.

(iii) By changing the vowel-sound.

20. First Mode.—The plural is formed by adding es or s. The ending es is a modern form of the old A.S. plural in as, as stanas, stones. The following are examples:—

(i) It will be seen that es in heroes does not add a syllable to the sing.

(ii) Nouns ending in f change the sharp f into a flat v, as in beeves, etc. But we say roofs, cliffs, dwarfs, chiefs, etc.

(iii) An old singular of lady was ladie; and this spelling is preserved in the plural. But there has arisen a rule on this point in modern English, which may be thus stated:—

(a) Y, with a vowel before it, is not changed in the plural. Thus we write keys, valleys, chimneys, days, etc.

(b) Y, with a consonant before it, is changed into ie when s is added for the plural. Thus we write ladies, rubies, and also soliloquies.

(iv) Beef is not now used as the word for a single ox. Shakespeare has the phrase “beef-witted” = with no more sense than an ox.

21. Second Mode.—The plural is formed by adding en or ne. Thus we have oxen, children, brethren, and kine.

(i) Children is a double plural. The oldest plural was cild-r-u, which became childer. It was forgotten that this was a proper plural, and en was added. Brethren is also a double plural. En was added to the old Northern plural brether — the oldest plural being brothr-u.

(ii) Kine is also a double plural of cow. The oldest plural was cŷ, and this still exists in Scotland in the form of kye. Then ne was added.

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22. Third Mode.—The plural is formed by changing the vowel-sound of the word. The following are examples:—

(i) To understand this, we must observe that when a new syllable is added to a word, the vowel of the preceding syllable is often weakened. Thus we find nātion, nătional; fox, vixen. Now the oldest plurals of the above words had an additional syllable; and it is to this that the change in the vowel is due.

23. There are in English several nouns with two plural forms, with different meanings. The following is a list:—

(i) Pea is a false singular. The s belongs to the root; and we find in Middle English “as big as a pease,” and the plurals pesen and peses.

24. Some nouns have the same form in the plural as in the singular. Such are deer, sheep, cod, trout, mackerel, and others.

(i) Most of these nouns were, in Old English, neuter.

(ii) A special plural is found in such phrases as: A troop of horse; a company of foot; ten sail of the line; three brace of birds; six gross of steel pens; ten stone weight, etc. In fact, the names of numbers, weights, measures, etc., are not put into the plural form. Thus we say ten hundredweight, five score, five fathom, six brace. In Old English we also said forty year, sixty winter; and we still say, a twelvemonth, a fortnight (= fourteen nights).

25. There are in English several false plurals—that is, real singulars which look like plurals. These are alms, riches, and eaves.

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(i) Alms is a compressed form of the A.S. aelmesse (which is from the Greek eleēmosunē). We find in Acts iii. 3, “an alms.” The adjective connected with it is eleemosynary.

(ii) Riches comes from the French richesse.

(iii) Eaves is the modern form of the A.S. efese, a margin or edge.

26. There are in English several plural forms that are regarded and treated as singulars. The following is a list:—

(i) Smallpox = small pocks.

27. There are many nouns that, from the nature of the case, can be used only in the plural. These are the names of things (a) That consist of two or more parts; or (b) That are taken in the mass.

(a) The following is a list of the first:—

(b) The following is a list of the second:—

 It must be noticed that several nouns—some of them in the above class—change their meaning entirely when made plural. Thus—

28. The English language has adopted many foreign plurals. These, (a) when fully naturalised, make their plurals in the usual English way; (b) when not naturalised, or imperfectly, keep their own proper plurals.

(a) As examples of the first kind, we have—

Bandits, cherubs, dogmas, indexes, memorandums, focuses, formulas, terminuses, etc.

(b) As examples of the second, we find—

(i) The Greek plurals acoustics, ethics, mathematics, optics, politics, etc., were originally adjectives. We now say logic—but logics, which still survives in the Irish Universities—was the older word.

29. Compounds attach the sign of the plural to the leading word,  especially if that word be a noun. These may be divided into three classes:—

(a) When the plural sign is added to the Noun, as: sons-in-law, hangers-on, lookers-on, etc.

(b) When the compound word is treated as one word, as: attorney-generals, major-generals, court-martials, spoonfuls, handfuls, etc.

(c) When both parts of the compound take the plural sign, as: men-servants, knights-templars, lords-justices, etc.

CASE.

30. Case is the form given to a noun to show its relation to other words in the sentence. Our language has lost most of these forms; but we still use the word case to indicate the function, even when the form has been lost.

(i) The word case is from the Latin casus, and means a falling. The old grammarians regarded the nominative as the upright case, and all others as fallings from that. Hence the use of the words decline and declension. (Of course the nominative cannot be a real case, because it is upright and not a falling.)

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31. We now employ five cases; Nominative, Possessive, Dative, Objective, and Vocative.

(i) In Nouns, only one of these is inflected, or has a case-ending — the Possessive.

(ii) In Pronouns, the Possessive, Dative, and Objective are inflected. But the inflexion for the Dative and the Objective is the same. Him and them are indeed true Datives: the old inflection for the Objective was hine and hi.

32. The following are definitions of these cases:—

(1) The Nominative Case is the case of the subject.

(2) The Possessive Case indicates possession, or some similar relation.

(3) The Dative Case is the case of the Indirect Object, and also the case governed by certain verbs.

(4) The Objective Case is the case of the Direct Object.

(5) The Vocative Case is the case of the person spoken to. It is often called the Nominative of Address.

(i) Nominative comes from the Lat. nomināre, to name. From the same root we have nominee.

(ii) Dative comes from the Lat. dativus, given to.

(iii) Vocative comes from the Lat. vocativus, spoken to or addressed.

33. The Nominative Case answers to the question Who? or What? It has always a verb that goes with it, and asserts something about it.

34. The Possessive Case has the ending ’s in the singular; ’s in the plural, when the plural of the noun ends in n; and ’ only when the plural ends in s.

 The possessive case is kept chiefly for nouns that are the names of living beings. We cannot say “the book’s page” or “the box’s lid,” though in poetry we can say “the temple’s roof,” etc. There are may points that require to be specially noted about the possessive:—

(i) The apostrophe (from Gr. apo, away, and strophē, a turning) stands in the place of a lost e, the possessive in O.E. having been in many cases es. In the last century the printers always put hop’d, walk’d, etc., for hoped, walked, etc. The use of the apostrophe is quite modern.

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(ii) If the singular noun ends in s, we often, but not always, write Moses’ rod, for conscience’ sake, Phœbus’ fire; and yet we say, and ought to say, Jones’s books, Wilkins’s hat, St James’s, Chambers’s Journal, etc.

(iii) We find in the Prayer-Book, “For Jesus Christ his sake.” This arose from the fact that the old possessive in es was sometimes written is; and hence the corruption into his. Then it came to be fancied that ’s was a short form of his. But this is absurd, for two reasons:—

(a) We cannot say that “the girl’s book” is = the girl his book.

(b) We cannot say that “the men’s tools” is = the men his tools.

35. How shall we account for the contradictory forms Lord’s-day, and Lady-day, Thurs-day and Fri-day, Wedn-es-day and Mon-day, and for the curious possessive Witenagemot?

(i) Lady-day, Friday, and Monday are fragments of the possessive of feminine Nouns in O.E. The oldest feminine possessive ended in an, which was then shortened into ladyē, lastly into lady. So with Frija, the goddess of love; and with Moon, which was feminine. Thus we see that in Lady-day, Friday, and Monday we have old feminine possessives. The word witenagemot means the meet or meeting of the witan, or wise men, the possessive of which was witěna.

36. The Dative Case answers to the question For whom? or To whom? It has no separate form for Nouns; and in Pronouns, its form is the same as that of the Objective. But it has a very clear and distinct function in modern English. This function is seen in such sentences as—

(1) He handed the lady a chair.

(2) Make me a boat!

(3) Woe worth the day! (=Woe come to the day!)

(4) Heaven send the Prince a better companion!

(5) Heaven send the companion a better Prince!

(6)                                    “Sirrah, knock me at this gate,
      Rap me here, knock me well, and knock me soundly.”
                        (Shakespeare, “Taming of the Shrew,” I.ii.31.)

(7) Methought I heard a cry! (= Meseems.)

(8) Hand me the salt, if you please.

Some grammarians prefer to call this the Case of the Indirect Object; but the term will hardly apply to day and me in (3) and (7). In all the other sentences, the dative may be changed into an objective with the prep. to or for.

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(i) In the sixth sentence, the me’s are sometimes called Ethical Datives.

(ii) In the seventh sentence, methought is = meseems, or it seems to me. There were in O.E. two verbs—thincan, to seem; and thencan, to think.

(iii) In the eighth sentence the phrase if you please is = if it please you, and the you is a dative. If the you were a nominative, the phrase would mean if you are a pleasing person, or if you please me.

37. The Objective Case is always governed by an active-transitive verb or a preposition. It answers to the question Whom? or What? It is generally placed after the verb. Its form is different from that of the Nominative in pronouns; but is the same in nouns.

(i) The direct object is sometimes called the reflexive object when the nominative and the objective refer to the same person—as, “I hurt myself;” “Turn (thou) thee, O Lord!” etc.

(ii) When the direct object is akin with the verb in meaning, it is sometimes called the cognate object. The cognate object is found in such phrases as: To die the death; to run a race; to fight a fight, etc.

(iii) A second direct object after such verbs as make, create, appoint, think, suffer, etc., is often called the factitive object. For example: The Queen made him a general; the Board appointed him manager; we thought him a good man, etc.

                Factitive comes from the Latin facěre, to make.

38. The difference between the Nominative and the Vocative cases is this: The Nominative case must always have a verb with it; the Vocative cannot have a verb. This is plain from the sentences:—

(i) John did that.
(ii) Don’t do that, John!

39. Two nouns that indicate the same person or thing are said to be in apposition; and two nouns in apposition may be in any case.

(i) But, though the two nouns are in the same case, only one of them has the sign or inflection of the case. Thus we say, “John the gardener’s mother is dead.” Now, both John and gardener are in the possessive case; and yet it is only gardener that takes the sign of the possessive.

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