Noun vs. Adjective

Main Difference

Noun and adjectives are the two parts of speech in English grammar. Both are different from one another based on their meaning and usage.

Difference Between Noun and Adjective

Comparison Chart

Noun vs. Adjective

A noun is an essential part of speech in English grammar. It is defined as “a noun is a word used as the name of a person place or a thing.” On the other hand, an adjective is one of the parts of speech in English grammar. It is defined as “a word that is used with a noun to describe or point out the noun.”

A noun is a name; on the flip side, an adjective is a complement for a noun or anything that qualifies a noun. In a sentence, the role of a noun is as a subject or an object; on the contrary, adjective acts as a modifier in a sentence, and it modifies the noun.

The placement of a noun can be anywhere within the sentence, whereas adjectives are commonly found before or after a noun. A noun can have its independent existence as a word, while an adjective cannot exist alone. Different types of a noun include the common noun, proper noun, collective, concrete, abstract noun, countable, and uncountable nouns. On the other hand, the types of adjectives are descriptive adjectives, proper adjectives, demonstrative, numeral, personal titles, interrogative, and possessive adjectives.

What is a Noun?

A noun is a naming word for people, objects, places, animals, qualities, and ideas that can exist on its own. There are many nouns, including the proper noun, common, concrete, abstract, collective nouns, countable nouns, and the uncountable noun. Proper noun tells the name of a known or special person, place, or thing, e.g., the names of famous personalities, days of the week, months, institutions, organizations, the holy texts, and the like. The first alphabet of a proper noun is always capital. A common noun refers to a general person, place, or thing, e.g., girl, place, a thing, etc. A concrete noun refers to anything or anyone that you can perceive through your physical senses, e.g., files, books, brush, glass, and similar tangible things.

An abstract noun refers to anything which cannot be perceived through five senses, i.e., it is intangible. It can be a quality (kindness, brightness), Action (laughter, hatred), and state (childhood, poverty, death). A countable noun is a noun (singular or plural ) that refers to anything you can count, e.g., pen, apple, dog, window, etc. A non-countable noun is a noun (having no plural form) that refers to something you could not usually count, e.g., oxygen, milk, gold, honesty, etc. A collective noun refers to a collection of things or persons taken as a whole, e.g., army (a group of soldiers), fleet (a collection of ships or vessels). Moreover, a noun can have gender, i.e., masculine and feminine gender. It is also categorized as singular or sometimes plural.

What is an Adjective?

An adjective is one of the eight parts of speech in English grammar. Its function is to qualify or modify a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying them. An adjective typically precedes the noun/pronoun which it modifies. Based on its position, an adjective can be ‘attributively and predicatively.’ Attributively refers to the adjective that is used directly with the noun as an epithet or an attribute, e.g., ‘The pretty girl is dancing.’ Predicatively is used along with the auxiliary verb ‘is’ e.g., ‘The boy is lazy.’

Other types of adjectives are possessive adjectives, demonstrative adjectives, indefinite adjectives, indefinite adjectives, descriptive adjectives, numeral adjectives, and demonstrative adjectives. A possessive adjective is marked by the words “my, your, his, her, its, our, their” in a sentence with a noun. The demonstrative adjectives are identified by “this, these, that, those, and what” in a sentence along with a noun. An indefinite adjective has a similarity with the indefinite pronoun. Indefinite adjectives include the words “some, little, all,” etc. Adjectives of quality or descriptive adjectives direct the kind or condition of a person or thing.

The numeral adjective refers to the number of persons or things we consider, e.g., many, several, five, etc. Numeral adjectives are divided into three types, and these are “indefinite numeral adjectives, definite numeral adjectives, and distributive numeral adjectives.” Lastly, demonstrative adjectives point out that to which of the thing or person we are referring. The use of more than one adjective in a sentence is known as the enumeration of adjectives.