What are examples of Common Uncountable Nouns?

What are uncountable nouns?

Uncountable nouns are things that can’t be counted by using a number, such as quantities of liquids or gases, as well as abstract ideas or qualities.

Uncountable nouns are used with a single verb, and do not use an indefinite article such as ‘a’ or ‘an’.

TRY THE FREE CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH TEST

Example sentences using uncountable nouns

For example, do not say ‘How many moneys will it cost?’

Because ‘money’ is an uncountable noun, you must use adjectives like much, a lot of, little, a little bit of, some, plenty, enough, or no.

Say:

• How much money will it cost?
• Will it cost a lot of money?
• It only costs a little bit of money.
• It will cost you some money, but not a lot of money.
• Do you have enough money?
• I have plenty of money.
• I have no money.

(The only time money is a countable noun is when we are speaking of specific denominations: ‘I have many rupees’, or ‘That sounds like a lot of Euros!’)

Here is a list of common uncountable nouns:

Things:	Gases:	Abstract:	Activities:
furniture	air	art	yoga
clothing	hydrogen	love	sports
luggage	nitrogen	humour	music
equipment	smoke	freedom	homework
money	steam	advice	business
tools		help	chess
	Nature:	welfare	research
Liquids:	sunshine	bravery	cricket
fuel	rain	aggression
water	snow	courage	Every Day:
petrol	ice	luck	breakfast
diesel	lightning	faith	lunch
fertiliser	weather	grief	dinner
bleach		knowledge	traffic
	Food Solids:	attention	transportation
Solids:	cheese	poetry	labour
silver	butter	care	paper
gold	meat	freedom	mail
dirt	fruit	pride	tea
concrete	pastry	privacy	time
wood	noodle	warmth	network
asphalt	rice	anger	hardware
			software
States of Being:	Food Liquids:	Mass:	work
sleep	milk	furniture	police
stress	juice	foliage	pay
childhood	tea	hair	equipment
youth	water	stuff
elderly	wine	sheep
sad	oil	public
happy	vinegar