mass noun.

[cupid04]

Can anyone give me examples of a mass noun. So often on Countdown
Susie Dent disallows a word because it is a mass noun and I wondered what
the rules were?

[Quizmonster]

Click http://grammar.about....mo/g/massnounterm.htm

[squarebear]

From reading that link, they seem valid words to me.

[emeritus]

Does this help

http://wiki.apterous....tters_game#Mass_nouns

[MarkRae]

In its simplest form, a mass noun is a singular noun which can't be pluralised even though it is used to refer to more than one (i.e. a mass) of individual items. To complicate things slightly, mass nouns take either a singular or plural verb depending on context.

And, for the record, Susie disallows mass nouns only if a contestant has attempted to pluralise them. E.g. 'cattle' would be perfectly acceptable, but 'cattles' wouldn't.

[Jonathan-Joe]

Mass nouns are allowed - it is their plurals that Susie disallows as these would be bad grammar. "Music" and "butter" are mass nouns, "musics" and "butters" would probably not be allowed in Countdown.

[bennynobrain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun


might help

[peashaq]

collective noun - hoover

[cupid04]

Thankyou for all your answers. Cupid04.

[woofgang]

but if you had garlic butter, parsley butter, anchovy butter, wouldn't that be a selection of butters?

[factor-fiction]

... and can't goats be described as butters.

[woofgang]

:-)

[MarkRae]

Butters most certainly should have been allowed. As has been suggested, a butter is "a fighter who strikes the opponent with the head", and therefore can easily be pluralised. Not only that, though - butter, as a regular verb, adds an 's' onto the infinitive to make the third person singular of the present tense, as in "He butters his bread very carefully".

[peashaq]

You have buttered your bed, so lie in it.