WEBVTT 00:00:00.214 --> 00:00:01.457 - [Voiceover] Hello grammarians. 00:00:01.457 --> 00:00:02.814 So today I'd like to talk to you 00:00:02.814 --> 00:00:06.467 about the idea of concrete and abstract nouns, 00:00:06.467 --> 00:00:07.408 and before we do that, 00:00:07.408 --> 00:00:11.390 I'd like to get into some word origins or etymology. 00:00:11.390 --> 00:00:13.873 So let's take each of these words in turn, 00:00:13.873 --> 00:00:17.427 because I think by digging into what these words mean, 00:00:17.427 --> 00:00:19.227 literally what they mean and where they come from, 00:00:19.227 --> 00:00:21.873 we'll get a better understanding of this concept. 00:00:21.873 --> 00:00:24.136 So both of these words come to us from Latin. 00:00:24.136 --> 00:00:26.691 Concrete comes to us from the Latin concretus, 00:00:26.691 --> 00:00:29.105 which means to grow together. 00:00:29.105 --> 00:00:33.302 So this part of it means grown. 00:00:33.302 --> 00:00:36.136 And this part means together. 00:00:36.136 --> 00:00:37.351 It refers to something that, you know, 00:00:37.351 --> 00:00:40.555 has grown together and become thick 00:00:40.555 --> 00:00:43.456 and kind of hard to get through and physical. 00:00:43.456 --> 00:00:46.474 The connotation here is that this is a physical thing. 00:00:46.474 --> 00:00:50.773 Something that is concrete is physical. 00:00:50.773 --> 00:00:55.773 Abstract, on the other hand, means to draw something away. 00:01:00.121 --> 00:01:05.112 So something that is abstract is drawn away from the real, 00:01:05.112 --> 00:01:07.098 from the concrete, from the physical. 00:01:07.098 --> 00:01:09.498 So this is not physical. 00:01:13.671 --> 00:01:15.773 And we make this distinction in English 00:01:15.773 --> 00:01:17.846 when we're talking about nouns. 00:01:17.846 --> 00:01:19.197 Is it something that is concrete, 00:01:19.197 --> 00:01:21.449 is it something you can look at or pick up 00:01:21.449 --> 00:01:24.793 or smell or sense or something that is abstract, 00:01:24.793 --> 00:01:26.569 something that isn't physical, 00:01:26.569 --> 00:01:28.530 but can still be talked about. 00:01:28.530 --> 00:01:33.222 So for example, the word sadness... 00:01:34.727 --> 00:01:36.577 Is a noun, right? 00:01:36.577 --> 00:01:37.557 This is definitely a noun. 00:01:37.557 --> 00:01:40.333 It's got this noun-making ending, 00:01:40.333 --> 00:01:42.934 this noun-forming suffix, ness. 00:01:42.934 --> 00:01:45.858 You know, we take the adjective sad 00:01:45.858 --> 00:01:50.235 and we toss this ness part onto it, we've got a noun. 00:01:50.235 --> 00:01:52.452 But can you see sadness? 00:01:52.452 --> 00:01:53.696 Is it something you can pick up? 00:01:53.696 --> 00:01:56.574 Sure, you can tell by being, you know 00:01:56.574 --> 00:01:59.581 observant and empathetic that your friend is sad, 00:01:59.581 --> 00:02:02.554 but it's not something you can pick up. 00:02:02.554 --> 00:02:06.858 You can't be like a measurable degree of sad. 00:02:06.858 --> 00:02:08.936 You couldn't take someone's sadness, 00:02:08.936 --> 00:02:10.434 put it under a microscope and say 00:02:10.434 --> 00:02:14.370 "Oh, Roberta, you are 32 degrees microsad." 00:02:14.370 --> 00:02:16.795 You know, it's not something physical. 00:02:16.795 --> 00:02:18.653 Concrete things, on the other hand, 00:02:18.653 --> 00:02:22.751 are things that we can see or count or measure. 00:02:22.751 --> 00:02:24.528 Just parts of the physical world. 00:02:24.528 --> 00:02:28.509 So anything you look at, like a dog is concrete, 00:02:28.509 --> 00:02:33.509 a ball is concrete, a cliff is concrete. 00:02:35.005 --> 00:02:36.398 Happiness... 00:02:38.087 --> 00:02:39.045 Is abstract. 00:02:39.045 --> 00:02:40.862 The idea of freedom... 00:02:43.189 --> 00:02:44.210 Is abstract. 00:02:44.210 --> 00:02:47.134 Though the presence of freedom in your life 00:02:47.134 --> 00:02:49.888 may manifest in physical objects, like 00:02:49.888 --> 00:02:52.848 "Oh, my parents let me have the freedom to eat ice cream." 00:02:52.848 --> 00:02:57.525 Ice cream is, you know, a concrete noun. 00:02:57.525 --> 00:02:59.894 But freedom, the thing that allows you, you know, 00:02:59.894 --> 00:03:03.004 the permission that you get from 00:03:03.004 --> 00:03:07.400 your parents to have ice cream. 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:10.178 That's not a physical object. 00:03:10.178 --> 00:03:11.699 So that's basically the difference. 00:03:11.699 --> 00:03:14.753 So a concrete noun is a physical object 00:03:14.753 --> 00:03:16.900 and an abstract noun is not. 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:18.088 This is why I really wanted to hit 00:03:18.088 --> 00:03:23.088 the idea that a noun can be a person, place, thing or idea, 00:03:23.713 --> 00:03:25.973 because nouns can be ideas, 00:03:25.973 --> 00:03:28.316 and those ideas tend to be abstract. 00:03:28.316 --> 00:03:32.576 Sadness, happiness, freedom, permission, liberty, injustice. 00:03:32.576 --> 00:03:37.510 All of these are abstract ideas. 00:03:37.510 --> 00:03:38.995 That's the difference. 00:03:38.995 --> 00:03:40.516 You can learn anything. 00:03:40.516 --> 00:03:41.777 David out.