Main Difference – Noun vs Adjective

Nouns and adjective are two of the parts of speech. The main difference between noun and adjective is that noun identifies a person, place, object, or idea whereas an adjective modifies a noun.

What is a Noun

A noun is a naming word. Nouns include people, objects, places, animals, qualities, and ideas. Nouns are the name of the things that are around us. Nouns also act as subjects and objects of sentences.

Nouns can be classified into different groups based on various characteristics. Given below are some of these categories.

Common nouns: Nouns that indicate the class of a person, place or thing.

Ex: sea, child, juice, flower, television, sunshade

Proper nouns: Nouns that indicate the specific name of a person, place or thing.

Ex: Russia, Brad Pitt, Moscow, Delhi, Nokia, Toyota, Tom Sawyer

Concrete nouns: Nouns that refer to things that can be perceived through the five senses.

Ex: beach, lion, girl, ship, bottle, rat, bicycle

Abstract nouns: Nouns that refer to things that cannot be perceived by the five senses; they refer to ideas, concepts or state of things.

Ex: sympathy, knowledge, fear, beauty, education

Collective Nouns: Nouns that indicate a group

Ex: flock, herd, parliament, team, trio

Countable nouns: Nouns that can be counted using numbers.

Ex: flowers, chairs, teeth, eggs, rabbits, bottles

Uncountable Nouns: Nouns that cannot be counted using numbers.

Ex: sugar, water, knowledge, salt, research

What is an Adjective

An adjective is a word that modifies a noun; it can be simply termed as a describing word. They can be used before or after a noun to modify its meaning. Adjectives are used with nouns to describe qualities such as, color, size, number and type. They make the meaning of a sentence more clear or exact. For example, tall, friendly, small are all adjectives. In the following examples, they are used to modify the noun boy.

Tall boy

Friendly boy

Small boy

More than one adjective can be used to modify a noun. Using more than one adjective is known as the enumeration of adjectives.

a small, grey mouse

thick, acrid, poisonous smoke

As mentioned above, an adjective can be used before or after a noun. An attribute adjective is an adjective that is found immediately before a noun.

Ex:

He threw out the old clothes.

The pretty girl has blue eyes.

In contrast, predicate adjectives are the adjectives that are used after a noun. Predicate adjectives always follow a linking verb and modify the subject of that linking verb.

Ex:

The flowers are blue.

She is hungry.

The table below will help you to identify the difference between attribute adjectives and predicate adjectives.

Like nouns, adjectives too can be categorized into different groups. Given below are some of these types of adjectives.

Possessive adjectives: Adjectives that are used to indicate ownership. Adjectives include my, your, his, her, its, our and their.

Demonstrative adjectives: Adjectives that are used to indicate specific things. This, These, Those, and That fall into this category.

Indefinite adjectives: Adjectives that do not indicate specific things. They are formed from indefinite pronouns. Some common indefinite adjectives include some, many, none, few and several.

In addition, numbers, colors, as well as articles (a, an, the), can be considered as adjectives.

Small blue star

Difference Between Noun and Adjective

Definition 

Noun is a word that identifies a person, place, object or idea.

Adjective is a word that modifies a noun.

Function

Nouns act as subjects or objects in a sentence.

Adjectives act as modifiers.

Order

Nouns can be found anywhere in a sentence.

Adjectives can be found before or after a noun.

Dependence

A noun can occur alone in a sentence.

An adjective cannot exist alone.

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