Concrete and abstract nouns | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

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 origin some
word origins or etymology so let's 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
concrete as' which means to grow
together
so this part of it means grown and this
part means together in refers to
something that you know has 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 as 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 that you can
look at or pick up or or smell or sense
or something that is abstract something
that isn't physical but can still be
talked about so for example um for
example the word sadness is a noun right
this is this is definitely a noun it's
got this noun making ending this now in
forming suffix Ness you know we take the
adjective sad and we we toss this Ness
part on to 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 it's not
something that you can pick up it's not
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 Micra
sad you know it's not it's not 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 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 Dave
it out