Which of the following is an example of an abstract word

Video transcript

- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians. So today I'd like to talk to you about the idea of concrete and abstract nouns, and before we do that, I'd like to get into some word origins or etymology. So let's take each of these words in turn, because I think by digging into what these words mean, literally what they mean and where they come from, we'll get a better understanding of this concept. So both of these words come to us from Latin. Concrete comes to us from the Latin concretus, which means to grow together. So this part of it means grown. And this part means together. It refers to something that, you know, has grown together and become thick and kind of hard to get through and physical. The connotation here is that this is a physical thing. Something that is concrete is physical. Abstract, on the other hand, means to draw something away. So something that is abstract is drawn away from the real, from the concrete, from the physical. So this is not physical. And we make this distinction in English when we're talking about nouns. Is it something that is concrete, is it something you can look at or pick up or smell or sense or something that is abstract, something that isn't physical, but can still be talked about. So for example, the word sadness... Is a noun, right? This is definitely a noun. It's got this noun-making ending, this noun-forming suffix, ness. You know, we take the adjective sad and we toss this ness part onto it, we've got a noun. But can you see sadness? Is it something you can pick up? Sure, you can tell by being, you know observant and empathetic that your friend is sad, but it's not something you can pick up. You can't be like a measurable degree of sad. You couldn't take someone's sadness, put it under a microscope and say "Oh, Roberta, you are 32 degrees microsad." You know, it's not something physical. Concrete things, on the other hand, are things that we can see or count or measure. Just parts of the physical world. So anything you look at, like a dog is concrete, a ball is concrete, a cliff is concrete. Happiness... Is abstract. The idea of freedom... Is abstract. Though the presence of freedom in your life may manifest in physical objects, like "Oh, my parents let me have the freedom to eat ice cream." Ice cream is, you know, a concrete noun. But freedom, the thing that allows you, you know, the permission that you get from your parents to have ice cream. That's not a physical object. So that's basically the difference. So a concrete noun is a physical object and an abstract noun is not. This is why I really wanted to hit the idea that a noun can be a person, place, thing or idea, because nouns can be ideas, and those ideas tend to be abstract. Sadness, happiness, freedom, permission, liberty, injustice. All of these are abstract ideas. That's the difference. You can learn anything. David out.

In English grammar, an abstract noun is a noun or noun phrase that names an idea, event, quality, or concept—for example, courage, freedom, progress, love, patience, excellence, and friendship. An abstract noun names something that can't be physically touched. Contrast that with a concrete noun.

According to "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language," abstract nouns are "typically non-observable and nonmeasurable.” But, as James Hurford explains, the distinction between abstract nouns and other common nouns "is relatively unimportant, as far as grammar is concerned." An example of abstract nouns used in a sentence is, "Silence can be a source of great strength." Here, "silence" and "strength" are abstract nouns because they name an idea and quality, respectively.

Examples and Observations

In the following examples, the abstract noun is listed in italics type.

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
– Robert Frost

"Men say they love independence in a woman, but they don't waste a second demolishing it brick by brick."

– Candice Bergen, quoted by Catherine Breslin in "The Mistress Condition." Dutton, 1976

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
– Erich Fromm

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
– Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates." The New York Times, 1979

"When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!"
– Laurie Anderson, "O Superman." 1981

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

– Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish." "Unpopular Essays." Simon & Schuster Inc., 1950

"Her face, which was long and dark chocolate brown, had a thin sheet of sadness over it, as light but as permanent as the viewing gauze on a coffin."
– Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Random House, 1969

The Nature of Abstract Nouns

"Abstract and concrete are usually defined together or in terms of each other. The abstract is that which exists only in our minds, that which we cannot know through our senses. It includes qualities, relationships, conditions, ideas, theories, states of being, fields of inquiry and the like. We cannot know a quality such as consistency directly through our senses; we can only see or hear about people acting in ways that we come to label consistent."

– William Vande Kopple, "Clear and Coherent Prose." Scott Foresman & Co., 1989

Countable and Uncountable Abstract Nouns

"Although abstract nouns tend to be uncountable (courage, happiness, news, tennis, training), many are countable (an hour, a joke, a quantity). Others can be both, often with shifts of meaning from general to particular (great kindness/many kindnesses)."

– Tom McArthur, "Abstract and Concrete." "The Oxford Companion to the English Language." Oxford University Press, 1992

Inflection of Abstract Nouns

"[M]anyabstract nouns are generally not inflected for number (lucks, nauseas) or they do not occur in the possessive (the commitment's time)."

– M. Lynne Murphy and Anu Koskela, "Key Terms in Semantics." Continuum, 2010

The Grammatical Unimportance of Abstract Nouns

"[R]ecognizing abstract nouns is relatively unimportant, as far as grammar is concerned. This is because there are few, if any, particular grammatical properties that affect just the set of abstract nouns. ... One suspects that the reason for the recurrent mention of abstract nouns is the clash between their (abstract) meanings and the traditional definition of a noun as the 'name of a person, place or thing.' The existence of obvious nouns such as liberty, action, sin and time is a sore embarrassment to such a definition, and the pragmatic response has been to apply a distinctive label to the problematic words."

– James R. Hurford, "Grammar: A Student's Guide." Cambridge University Press, 1994

The Lighter Side of Abstract Nouns

" 'It represents Discipline,' said Mr. Etherege. ... 'And to the uninstructed mind, Uniformity.' His abstract nouns were audibly furnished with capital letters. 'But the latter notion is fallacious.'

" 'No doubt,' said Fen. He perceived that this incipient homily required punctuation rather than argument.

" 'Fallacious,' Mr. Etherege proceeded, 'because the attempt to produce Uniformity inevitably accentuates Eccentricity. It makes Eccentricity, as it were, safe.' "

– Bruce Montgomery [aka Edmund Crispin], "Love Lies Bleeding." Vintage, 1948

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