Material Nouns

 Material Noun are names of materials or substances out of which things are made. Ex: gold, iron, silver etc.”

Material noun is the name given to the material, substance or things made up of alloy. It refers to the type of substance instead of individual particles of the substance. Material nouns are not countable means we cannot count them because they are in the forms of liquid, semi-liquid or solid. This noun is especially called as material noun because nouns in this class are almost materials like cloth, air, metal, gold, salt, iron, silver, steel, brass, bronze, copper, aluminium, lead, coal, coral, gem, diamond, glass, fibre, calcium, plastic, rubber, paper, cement, paint, plywood, synthetics, shampoo, soap, perfume, wine, tar, chemical, rexene etc. Sometimes we cannot make the plural forms of material noun.

Some of the material nouns are used as the count nouns, for example; 'wine' as one may talk about different wines, type of wine instead of the substance of wine. So, here we can say that wine is not a material noun as type of wine is countable. We can say that material nouns are common nouns as they denote substances instead of denoting people or places.

For examples:

• Cotton dresses are very cheap and comfortable.
• My mom purchased a gold ring for me.
• I drink milk in the silver
• My father has a shop for diamonds.
• Calcium is a good mineral for health.
• Plastic is made up of many molecules of ethylene.
• There are many utensils in my kitchen made up of iron.
• Taj Mahal is built using marbles.
• I drink milk daily in the night.
• Most of the industries use fibre.
• In the ancient time, most of the kitchen utensils were made up of brass.

Categorized Examples of Material Nouns

Material nouns are names given to the raw elements or objects exist in the nature and cannot be created by human being, however many new things can be created by man using raw materials. The main source of raw materials are nature, animals and plants. We have provided below the list of common nouns under various categories such as:

Material nouns from nature: water, air, silver, gold, iron, copper, sand, coal, rock, sunlight, rain, earth, salt, etc.

Material nouns from animals: egg, meat, honey, milk, silk, leather, wool, etc.

Material nouns from plants: cotton, food, oil, wood, jute, coffee, medicine, tea, rubber, perfume, etc.

Man made material nouns: acid, alcohol, asphalt, brick, cement, butter, chalk, ghee, cheese, dacron, ebony, enamel, felt, gelatin, paraffin, cloth, etc.

Rules to be followed while using material nouns in the Sentence:

Following are the rules you need to remember in order to make use of material nouns in the sentence.

a) Generally, articles (a, an or the) are not used with material nouns when they are uncountable such as:

• Honey is wholesome food and beneficial to health.
• Water boils only at 100°C temperature.

b) Articles (a and an) may be used with material nouns when they are countable (denoting types of material or showing helping nature) such as:

• I would like to eat a Dutch cheese.
• It is a very healthy wine.

c) Use of 'the' and 'some' can also be done in the following way:

• The honey in the bottle is mine. Don’t give it others!
• I saw there is some milk in the glass.