noun
/naʊn/noun, verb
noun is spelled N-O-U-N: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 4.1 times per million words in written English, the 12,764th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, noun means “A word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as person, animal, place, word, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of noun is nouns.
How many letters and syllables are in noun?
| Letters | 4: N-O-U-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.1 times per million words; the 12,764th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is noun?
Noun appears 4.1 times per million words in written English, the 12,764th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce noun?
- US /naʊn/
- /nɒ(ʊ)n/
- Canada /nʌʊn/
Noun has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-inlandnorth-noun.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-noun.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with noun?
8 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as noun from its last stressed vowel (/aʊn/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of noun
- nouns plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- nouning participle, present
- nouned participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does noun mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as person, animal, place, word, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea: one of the basic parts of speech in many languages, including English.
- 2
archaicEither a word that can be used to refer to a person, animal, place, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality or idea, or a word that modifies or describes a previous word or its referent; a substantive or adjective, sometimes also including other parts of speech such as numeral or pronoun.
- 3
An object within a user interface to which a certain action or transformation (i.e., verb) is applied.
verb
- 1
To convert a word to a noun.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate noun?
Wiktionary records 3 abbreviations of noun: N, n, n..
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Noun in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | nom, nom substantif, substantif |
| German | Dingwort, Gegenstandswort, Hauptnennwort, Hauptwort, Selbstwort, Substantiv |
| Portuguese | substantivo , nome |
| Spanish | nombre, nombre sustantivo, nombre substantivo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does noun come from?
Inherited from Middle English noun, from Anglo-Norman noun, non, nom, from Latin nōmen (“name; noun”). The grammatical sense in Latin was a semantic loan from Koine Greek ὄνομα (ónoma). Doublet of name and nomen.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).