What are Countable Nouns? Definition And Examples

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There will be many such things around you that you can count. Such as tables, chairs, mango, apple, cow, bird, houses, etc. These are called countable nouns. If you want to know more about the countable noun, get here the complete information about countable nouns with the meaning and examples.

What are countable nouns?

A countable noun is a noun that refers to a name that can be counted, for example, car, mobile, pen, chair, table, etc. The countable noun is also called a count noun.

You can find many things around you which can be counted and some cannot. The things, which you count, in English Grammar, you can call countable nouns, and the ones which cannot be counted are called uncountable nouns.

Examples of some countable nouns: dog, cow, cat, animal, man, chair, lawn, city, egg, finger, boy, book, year, etc.

Countable nouns are easy to recognize because they can be quantified. Suppose there are some mangoes in a basket. You can count them. So, the word “mangoes” is a countable noun.

  1. A countable noun can be singular or plural: The number of things can be one or more than one. In English grammar, the singular form is used for one, and the plural form is used for more than one. The form of the noun is also used as singular and plural.

For example:

I have a pen.

I have 5 pens.

Look at both the sentences given above. In the first sentence, “pen” is used and in the second sentence, “pens” is used. The first sentence tells about one pen; the second uses pens because the number is  5. So in the first sentence “pen” is singular and in the second sentence “pen” is plural.

Some examples of singular and plural nouns:

bottle – bottles

cup – cups

book – books

wolf -wolves

pencil – pencils

desk – desks

sticker – stickers

mobile- mobiles

chair – chairs

fruit – fruits

Watch – watches

city – cities

country – countries

child – children

man – men

hero – heroes

tooth – teeth

person – people

  1. Indefinite article i.e. a/an is used with a countable noun.

As stated in the sentence given below.

I have a pen.

I have an apple.

The indefinite article “a” is used for pen, and “an” is used for apple.

  1. You can use determiners like every, each, several, etc. with countable nouns. For example:

I have checked every room.

Every apple is looking good in the basket.

There are many people at the party.