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- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians.

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So today I'd like to talk to you

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about the idea of concrete
and abstract nouns,

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and before we do that,

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I'd like to get into some
word origins or etymology.

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So let's take each of these words in turn,

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because I think by digging
into what these words mean,

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literally what they mean
and where they come from,

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we'll get a better
understanding of this concept.

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So both of these words
come to us from Latin.

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Concrete comes to us
from the Latin concretus,

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which means to grow together.

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So this part of it means grown.

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And this part means together.

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It refers to something that, you know,

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has grown together and become thick

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and kind of hard to get
through and physical.

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The connotation here is that
this is a physical thing.

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Something that is concrete is physical.

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Abstract, on the other hand,
means to draw something away.

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So something that is abstract
is drawn away from the real,

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from the concrete, from the physical.

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So this is not physical.

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And we make this distinction in English

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when we're talking about nouns.

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Is it something that is concrete,

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is it something you can look at or pick up

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or smell or sense or
something that is abstract,

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something that isn't physical,

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but can still be talked about.

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So for example, the word sadness...

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Is a noun, right?

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This is definitely a noun.

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It's got this noun-making ending,

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this noun-forming suffix, ness.

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You know, we take the adjective sad

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and we toss this ness part
onto it, we've got a noun.

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But can you see sadness?

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Is it something you can pick up?

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Sure, you can tell by being, you know

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observant and empathetic
that your friend is sad,

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but it's not something you can pick up.

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You can't be like a
measurable degree of sad.

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You couldn't take someone's sadness,

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put it under a microscope and say

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"Oh, Roberta, you are
32 degrees microsad."

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You know, it's not something physical.

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Concrete things, on the other hand,

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are things that we can
see or count or measure.

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Just parts of the physical world.

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So anything you look at,
like a dog is concrete,

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a ball is concrete, a cliff is concrete.

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Happiness...

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Is abstract.

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The idea of freedom...

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Is abstract.

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Though the presence of
freedom in your life

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may manifest in physical objects, like

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"Oh, my parents let me have
the freedom to eat ice cream."

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Ice cream is, you know, a concrete noun.

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But freedom, the thing
that allows you, you know,

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the permission that you get from

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your parents to have ice cream.

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That's not a physical object.

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So that's basically the difference.

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So a concrete noun is a physical object

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and an abstract noun is not.

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This is why I really wanted to hit

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the idea that a noun can be a
person, place, thing or idea,

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because nouns can be ideas,

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and those ideas tend to be abstract.

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Sadness, happiness, freedom,
permission, liberty, injustice.

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All of these are abstract ideas.

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That's the difference.

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You can learn anything.

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David out.