Uncountable equivalent countable

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

bread a loaf

clothing a garment

laughter a laugh

luggage a case, a bag

poetry a poem

money a coin, a note

work [but > 2.31, 2.33] a job

Nouns for animals are countable; nouns for meat are uncountable: a cow/beef a deer/venison a pig/pork, a sheep/mutton

Nouns not normally countable in English

A number of nouns which are countable in other languages (and are therefore used in the singular and plural in those languages) are

2 Nouns

usually uncountable in English (and therefore not normally used with a/an or in the plural). A few common examples are: baggage, furniture, information, macaroni, machinery, spaghetti [> App 4]:

We bought (some) new furniture for our living room recently

I'd like some information please.

Partitives: nouns which refer to part of a whole

We can refer to a single item (a loaf of bread), a part of a whole (a slice of bread) or a collection of items (a packet of biscuits) by means of partitives. Partitives are useful when we want to refer to specific pieces of an uncountable substance, or to a limited number of countable items. They can be singular (a piece of paper; a box of matches) or plural (two pieces of paper; two boxes of matches) and are followed by of when used before a noun. The most useful are:

General partitives

Words such as piece and (less formal) bit can be used with a large number of uncountables (concrete or abstract): singular: a piece of/bit of chalk/cloth/information/meat/plastic plural: pieces of/bits of chalk/cloth/information/meat/plastic.

Specific partitives

Here is a brief summary, but [> App 5] for more examples:

Single items or amounts: a ball of string, a bar of chocolate, a cube of ice, a lump of sugar; a sheet of paper, a slice of bread

A few of these can be re-expressed as compounds:

e.g. a sugar lump, ice cubes

'Containers' used as partitives:

a bag of flour; a box of matches, a cup of coffee; a jar of jam,

a packet of biscuits, a pot of tea; a tube of toothpaste

Most of these can be re-expressed as compounds: e.g. a jam-jar a

matchbox, a teapot, to describe the container itself. Thus a teapot

describes the container (which may be full or empty), while a pot ot

tea describes a pot with tea in it [> 2.10.7].