uncount nouns

Some nouns in English are uncount nouns.

We do not use uncount nouns in the plural and we do not use them with the indefinite article, a/an.

We ate a lot of foods > We ate a lot of food
We bought some new furnitures > We bought some new furniture
That’s a useful information > That’s useful information

We can use some quantifiers with uncount nouns:

He gave me some useful advice.
They gave us a lot of information.

Uncount nouns often refer to:

  • Substances: food; water; wine; salt; bread; iron
  • Human feelings or qualities: anger; cruelty; happiness; honesty; pride;
  • Activities: help; sleep; travel; work
  • Abstract ideas: beauty; death; fun; life

Common uncount nouns

There are some common nouns in English, like accommodation, which are uncount nouns even though they have plurals in other languages:

advice    baggage    equipment    furniture    homework    information   
knowledge    luggage    machinery    money    news    traffic   

Let me give you some advice.
How much luggage have you got?

If we want to make these things countable, we use expressions like:

a piece of...    pieces of...    a bit of...    bits of...    an item of...    items of...   

Let me give you a piece of advice.
That’s a useful piece of equipment.
We bought a few bits of furniture for the new apartment.
She had six separate items of luggage.

but we do not use accommodation, money and traffic in this way.

Exercise

Comments

Dear All

I hope my message finds you all well

please I have a question about a snetence like this one (Hi Book Worms! Hope everyone "has had" a great week) in this sentence writin (has then followed by had) so waht is the name of this rule I mean is it past perfect or what 

I also get lost in grammer you might notice what can i do and how am I suposed to start 
I dream to be an Expert in using english by passing IELTS 

Hello Alexman!

I know what you mean. That sentence does sound a bit confusing!

If you look at it though, it's still present because it uses has. The next part, had, is the past participle of 'have'. Put together, has had IS a perfect tense - but it's the present perfect, not the past perfect! You can guess that, because the example you chose is about the same week they are talking about. Past perfect is for things which are definitely in the past. You can read more about the differences on our pages about present perfectpast perfect, and the perfect forms generally.

Keep looking through our pages for help with grammar - but don't forget there are other things which are just as important for the IELTS exam.
Hope that helps!
Jeremy Bee

hello please answer to my question:why we say a lot of food?is it true?i think we must use lot of food.

Why ,I think it is true Because it is prhase 'a lot of'

Hello sugar_azimova,
This is something that many of my students also have trouble with. While we can say  lots  of food, we need to use  if we use  lot,  without the -s ending. 
Also, lots of  is slightly more informal than  a lot of.

Regards,

Stephen Jones

The LearnEnglish Team

nice. like it

I like this class))

HELLO this is Soma..................i am confused about singular count noun............for example."some new books".......how this can be singular...............please help me. thank uou.

Hello!Could you explain the sentence number 8.Why in the second part must be "is finished" .Thank you!

Hello Enara,
That's because 'homework' is an uncount noun and we treat uncount nouns as singular when we are choosing which verb form to use.
Best wishes,
Adam
The LearnEnglish Team

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