Study Material for Common Nouns in General English for Bank Exams

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NOUNS
We use nouns to refer to animals, people, places and things.
Kinds and uses
☞   Proper nouns: The specific names by which we know an individual animal, a person, a place, such as an institution, a building or a town, or something such as a month, a day of the week, a season or a festival.
   E.g. Smith; Delhi; India Gate; January; Sankranthi.. etc.
   Note: that all proper nouns begin with a capital letter.
☞   Common nouns: words that name people, animals, places and things of the same kind Dog (as in my dog, Goldie), doctor (as in Satish, a doctor), library (as in central library), spoon(as in a plastic spoon)
   Note: that all common nouns begin with a lower-case letter.
☞   Common nouns are countable when:
We use a / an in front of them.
   A bag, an orange, a shirt, an engineer
   ➾ We can talk about many of them using their plural forms, with or without numbers in front of them.
Ships, two books, seven women, many sheep, a few lemons.
   ➾ We can use them in questions that begin with 'how many'.
How many pens do you need? How many children are present today?

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☞   Common nouns are uncountable when:
   ➾ We do not use a/an in front of them.
Not a slat, but salt; not an oil, but oil.
   ➾ We do not use their plural forms, with or without numbers in front of them, to specify what quantity we are talking about.
Not a sugar, two sugars, many milks, but a grain of/two spoons of/four bags of/ ten kilograms of / many packets of / a lot of sugar, a little milk.
☞   We do not use them in questions that begin with 'how many', but only in those that begin with 'how much'.
Not How money do you owe him? but How much money do you owe him? not A How many plastic is manufactured in a day?, but How much plastic is manufactured in a day?
☞   Note: that some nouns can be used both as countables, when they refer to a thing, and as uncountables, when they refer to the substance or material it is made up of.
There are three glasses on the tray. ('glasses', countable noun).
The tray is made of glass. ('glass', uncountable noun).
Some countable nouns are concrete and represent people, things or activities that can be seen, touched or heard, for example rose, table, basket. Other countable nouns are abstract and represent states, feelings or qualities, which can only be felt or imagined, for example hop, ambition, joy. Similarly, some uncountable nouns are concrete, for example cotton, clothing, bread, while others are abstract, for example peace, pain, anger.
☞ Collective nouns: common nouns followed by 'of' and referring to groups of people or things.
A team of players, an army of soldiers, a bouquet of flowers.
☞   Note: that when using collective nouns, you will usually have to use the complete expression in order to make sense. For example, the collective noun 'bunch' by itself would not tell people what you are talking about because it could be used for grapes, roses or letters. Exceptions to this are, for example, 'an army', 'a bouquet' and 'a gang', which are usually used for soldiers, flowers and thieves respectively.

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Plural forms of nouns
We use plural forms of nouns to talk about people, places and things that are more than one in number, for example 'two trolleys', 'a box of brushes', 'a few monkeys'.
Regular forms: You can follow the patterns below to form the plural forms of most nouns.
1.   Add-s in the case of most nouns: mugs, pets, beds, cups, tubs, chiefs, cans, sums, teachers, dolls, months, smiles, tongues, days, windows.
2.   Add-es after nouns ending in:
   -s: glasses, classes, passes, masses.
   -x: boxes, taxes, faxes.
   -ch: matches, clutches, stitches.
   -sh: wishes, bushes, dishes.
3.   Add-s after nouns ending in -ay, -ey,-oy, -uy: rays, keys, toys, guys.
4.   In nouns ending in a consonant letter+-y, replace the final-y with 'ies': countries, cities, ladies, babi es.
5.   In nouns ending in-fe, replace the letters with-ves: knives, lives, wives.
Irregular forms: There are some nouns for which you cannot find the plural forms by following the patterns above. You will have to learn the plurals of these nouns through reading or by looking them up in a standard dictionary Look at some plurals that do not follow the usual pattern.
1.   Nouns ending in-f forms plurals:
   ☞ With a final -f : roof/ roofs, chief/ chiefs, proof/ proofs.
   ☞ With a final -ves in place of the -f : calf/calves, loaf/loaves, leaf/ leaves.
   ☞ With either a final-s or a final -ves: dwarf/ dwarfs or dwarves, hoof / hoofs or hooves, scarf/ scarfs or scarves.
2.   Nouns ending in -o form plurals:
  ☞ Always with a final-oes: potatoes, tomatoes, echoes.
   ☞ With either a final-oes or-os: buffaloes/ buffalos.
   ☞ Always with a final-os: kilos, radios, videos, photos.
3.   Nouns whose plural forms are formed by adding-en/-ren: oxen, children
4.   Nouns whose plural forms are formed by changes in letters within the singular form: foot/feet, mouse/mice, man/men.

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Tips to remember
☞   The following words are countable and are normally used in singular form only. The indefinite article a/an should not be used with them.
☞   The words such as measles, mumps, ethics, maths, politics, phonetics, rickets, billiards and innings look like plural nouns but give singular meaning. So, they take singular form of verbs.
☞   Some nouns have the same form whether singular or plural.
Sheep, deer, service, series, species, apparatus.
☞   The following nouns are always used in the plural form only.
Cattle, scissors, spectacles, electorate, binoculars, crackers, clergy. These are used with plural form of verbs.
☞   Add's' to the main word in compound noun to make it plural.
Sister-in-law, sister's- in-law
☞   The possessive case of a compound noun is formed by adding's' to the last word.
Father-in-law's property.

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☞   After the phrases one of, some of, each of, either of, neither of, any of, none of, a plural form of a noun is used.
☞   Nouns indicating numerals should be used in singular form.
A dozen eggs/ two dozen oranges.
☞ After collective noun either a singular or plural form of verb is used.
☞   An apostrophe and 's' is used with living beings only to show possession.
☞   When two nouns are connected by 'and' and are closely related add an apostrophe and s to the last noun.
☞   Collective nouns, such as family, majority, audience, and committee are singular when they act in a collective fashion or represent one group. They are plural when the members of the collective body act as individuals. Collective nouns will usually be singular in Sentence Correction sentences.
A majority of the shareholders wants the merger.
This sentence is grammatically correct - but confusing. To determine whether a confusing noun requires a singular or plural verb, it might be helpful to visualize what's actually going on in the sentence. Is the sentence talking about something that acts as a singular entity? Or is it talking about the individual elements within that entity?
In the sentence here, there is no indication that the sentence is referring to the individuals within the majority. The "majority" acts as one - as a singular entity - and therefore requires a singular verb, "wants."
Again, the "flock of birds" is referred to as a singular group - we're not talking about each bird's direction of flight, but the direction of the flock as a whole - thus it requires the singular verb "is" not the plural verb "are".
The team are always fighting amongst themselves.
This is an example of a collective noun that requires a plural verb. While 'team' is often used as a singular collective noun, in this case, the sentence describes the fighting that occurs between the individual members of the team. "Team" therefore refers to several individual members, and requires a plural verb, "are," as a result.
The key to these questions is simplicity: recognize the collective noun, visualize what's going on in the sentence, and proceed.

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Directions (Q. 1-6): Each question below has a blank, indicating that something has been omitted. Choose the word from the five options for the blank that best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
1.   The work increases our ___ about how the body fights disease.
   1) knowledge   2) knowledges
   3) knowledgably 4) acknowledge
   5) knowledgeable
2.   They are doing some fascinating-__________ into the language of dolphins.
   1) Researches   2) researcher
   3) research   4) re searches
   5) re search
3.   In our family, we share the ______ between us.
   1) Houseworks   2) housework
   3) houses works 4) house works
   5) house working
4.   The first task is to clean up the _____ left behind by the factories.
   1) Pollutions   2) pollution
   3) polluting   4) pollute
   5) polite
5.   They are suffering from _____ lack of medical supplies.
   1) a serious   2) serious
   3) seriously   4) seriousness
   5) series
6.   He's starting to get a few grey _____ now.
   1) Hair   2) heirs   3) heir
   4) hairs   5) hairy