Nouns

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /naʊnz/

Definitions

1. A word category representing more than one person, thing, or idea recognized in communication
2. This term describes multiple entities or concepts that can be referred to collectively in language
3. The plural version used for naming more than one person, place, thing, or idea

Etymology: "Nouns" is simply the plural of "noun," so its history is that of "noun" itself, with the plural ending added in the usual way. The base word arrived in English through Anglo-Norman "noun," "non," and "nom," which descended from Latin "nōmen," meaning "name." The surprise is that the grammatical sense was never originally Latin: Roman grammarians borrowed it as a semantic loan from Koine Greek "ónoma," which also meant "name," so the part of speech was named for the same idea as a person's name. That makes "noun" a doublet of "name" and "nomen," three forms of one ancient word that split apart as they passed through different languages. English kept the Latin-derived form for the grammatical category, while "name" came down through Germanic. The plural "nouns" therefore simply names more than one of these labelled words.