Concrete and abstract nouns | The parts of speech | Grammar

- [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.