Many words in English can be adapted to be used for different grammatical functions. We often use prefixes and suffixes (extra parts of the word added at the beginning or the end) to change the meaning of a word for a variety of purposes. Adjectives and verbs can be turned into nouns, for example happy becomes the feeling of happiness, run becomes the doer of the verb, runner. There are many different ways to do this that sometimes have individual quirks – but there are also some general rules to help know how to create nouns from other words.
The following is a list of the most common suffix changes to form nouns:
1. Add –ness to form nouns from adjectives
The suffix –ness forms nouns from adjectives. Not all adjectives can have –ness added to them, but it is a common form – especially with adjectives ending in y (though note the spelling change, to –iness), hard consonant sounds like d, and many adjectives ending in ful. Common examples are:
- ready – They questioned her readiness for the test.
- happy – It is important to create happiness for everyone.
- weak – Eating too much cake was a major weakness of his.
- sad – The closure of the post office brought sadness to the community.
- mad – The decision to drive in the snow was pure madness.
- forgetful – Forgetfulness comes with old age.
2. Add –ity to form nouns from adjectives
The suffix –ity forms nouns from adjectives. Again, this is only for certain adjectives, though it is common adjectives ending in –ble or with soft –s sounds. To form nouns with –ity, changes in spelling often occur, such as replacing the last few letters of the adjective. Common examples are:
- responsible – Your children are not my responsibility.
- possible – Nuclear war seemed like a real possibility.
- scarce – The scarcity of drinks became problematic during the party.
- hilarious – They reacted to the joke with much hilarity.
- probable – It’s hard to guess the probability of her passing the test.
3. Add –ance or –ence to form nouns from adjectives or verbs
The suffix –ance (or –ence) can be added to either adjectives or verbs to form nouns. This is particularly used for adjectives ending in –ent or –ant (where the spelling changes to replace t with -ce) and various verbs. Common examples include:
- independent – Having a car has improved my independence.
- important – Never underestimate the importance of studying.
- silent – Enjoy the silence while the children are away.
- appear – The appearance of a second singer improved the concert.
- resist – The home team put up a strong resistance against their opponents
4. Add –ment to form nouns from adjectives or verbs
The suffix –ment can be added to either adjectives or verbs to form nouns. It is mostly used with verbs, of many kinds, but occasionally also with adjectives with soft endings (such as y endings). This suffix normally does not change the spelling of the core word (though y may change to i). Common examples include:
- appoint – I need to make an appointment with my doctor.
- assign – The final essay was a very big assignment.
- enjoy – Don’t let the rain affect your enjoyment of this walk.
- merry – The children found a lot of merriment in the clown’s antics.
- replace – Our replacement teacher was much better than the first one.
5. Add –tion or –sion to form nouns from verbs
The suffix –tion (or –sion) can be added to verbs to form nouns. They follow many different verb forms, and often change spellings to fit comfortably (for example adding an additional vowel or changing a consonant to sound more natural).
- inform – There is not enough information about foxes in our area.
- decide – The committee will make a formal decision this Friday.
- describe – The police have a good description of the thief.
- multiply – I like addition and subtraction but multiplication is difficult.
- admit – The criminal’s admission of guilt got him in trouble.
Note that a lot of the changes from adjective or verb to noun will need to be learned individually, and spelling rules will not always help you – even if you know how to choose the right suffix, the spelling to connect it to the core word may not be simple.
Admit is a good example of this, as it can be used as a verb with two different meanings, and each one forms a noun with a different suffix:
- Admit – to confess – The criminal’s admission.
- Admit – to give access – Admittance to the top floor is prohibited.
6. Use –ship or –hood to form nouns from other nouns
The suffixes –ship and –hood can be used to create nouns from other nouns. Nouns with –ship added to the end create an abstract noun that shows a relationship (relationship itself is an example!).
- friend – Our friendship is very strong.
- partner – We are in partnership with a major organisation.
Nouns with –hood added to the end are abstract nouns to show groupings, which can refer to grouped people, areas or, more abstractly, periods of time:
- priest – Entering the priesthood is a very serious commitment.
- neighbour – Our neighbourhood is thankfully very quiet.
- child – My childhood was a fun and productive time!
This is a quick introduction to using suffixes to form new nouns from other words. There are many exceptions, and these are patterns rather than rules, so often it is necessary to learn examples individually. However, these patterns can quickly build your vocabulary, and will help you understand what a new noun means when you are familiar with its root. The suffixes also give useful signals to identify a word as a noun. If you have any questions, do comment below!
I want to learn english
It was very helpful text . Thanks
Why “resistance ” is ending with ance instead of ence. Any rules for it ?
Hi Sathish,
I don’t believe there are any really useful rules for such spellings, as it’s just how the language has developed over time. With endings like -ence and -ance the vowel is generally unstressed, making it the unpronounced schwa sound, so as the spoken language doesn’t heavily dictate one sound or another, we get variations in written spelling. Often, indeed, it’s the way pronunciation has changed over time that influences how spellings evolve, so they’re not really rule-based developments.
Phil
Hi what is the difference of a adverb and a verb?
Hi Bella, I have a few articles discussing different word types under Parts of Speech, but probably a good place to start is the Word Order guide, which discusses them separately: https://englishlessonsbrighton.co.uk/word-order-english-sentences/
Want simple answer? ……Resistant ends on -ant hence the noun formed ends with -ance
you are a pro at everthing you do
It is an authentic system for learning English.
phil,
can you tell me the noun of these (kind, sweet, fun, forget, mind,)
love,
lily
Hi Lily,
Sorry I missed this, there are various options for some depending on the meaning, but for example kindness, sweetness, forgetfulness and mindfulness; but mind and fun are also nouns.
Phil
Nice…..it is a best way to learn it
I want to learn English
nice material, thanks
Nice to see that
Are nouns sometime form by adding a suffix such as -ment or -Ness to a verb or adjective such as greedy or astonish?
Hi Nofa, yes, as you’ve identified, ‘astonishment’ is another example of a noun formed from a verb with -ment, and ‘greediness’ would be a noun formed from an adjective with -ness.
How would you make alter a noun?
Hi Lydia, the examples under points 1 and 6 are for forming nouns from adjectives and other nouns. You can also often form nouns using the present participles of verbs, for example, “Running is a sport.”
it is very useful to study, so I have question to you explaint such. How to create the word that ending with -ive -tle -g
-ive is quite a common one for creating adjectives usually from verbs (to have the quality of the action):
to act – active
to create – creative
But -tle and -g are much more general, ‘tle’ is quite a common consonant cluster that you can find at the end of many nouns and adjectives without necessarily containing a common meaning. -g is a letter that doesn’t contain a meaning on its own.
How can u change adjective and verb to noun example
Verb: Arrived, continue, submit, break, drain.
Adjective: Free, real, safe, inferior, tender
The verbs will use various suffixes, in your example -al (arrival), -tion/-sion (continuation, submission and -age (breakage, drainage).
The adjectives use some examples from the article, e.g. 2. -ity for reality, inferiority, and just -ty for safety., or 1. -ness for tenderness. Free is a different one, using -dom, which is a suffix I don’t think I included in the article – freedom, also used in words like kingdom and wisdom.
Please tell how to change impressive in the noun form
Hi Bharat,
Sorry for the slow reply as I was away – “impressive” (striking in appearance) is connected to the noun “impression” (a perceived appearance).
Phil
Can you tell my the noun of this words ?
special,creative,original,funny,incredible,serious,delightful.
Please
Hi Ahmed,
If you use a good dictionary, when you look up each word you will find adv, noun, verb variations. The online ones do this now. This may be useful because there won’t just be one noun form for these, depending on your needs – for example ‘special’ can be a specialist, specialism or specialty. In other cases the noun is a bit different in meaning to the adjective, for example ‘fun’ is an enjoyable activity while ‘funny’ is amusing.
Creative can be the same for a noun (as a person) or creativity.
These are more simple:
Original – originality
Serious – seriousness
Delightful – delight / delightfulness
Please tell me noun form of the words “deny”and”bury”
These both use the suffix -ial, denial and burial.
when looking at the word chemical, what is the word formation process from the word chemical as an adjective to the word chemical as a noun
They are homonyms, i.e. the same word.
Ooooh so interesting
Hi Phil,
While your article is mainly on converting adjectives or verbs to nouns, I suppose the use of suffixes (i.e. the addition of group of letters to the end of a “root” word) also allows us to change nouns to adjectives/verbs as well as verbs to nouns/adjectives and so on/so forth, correct?
Also, while I noticed that suffixes often allow us to convert adjectives/verbs to nouns, or verbs/nouns to adjectives, there appears to much fewer examples of nouns/adjectives to verbs. Would you be able to list a few examples of such cases (i.e. converting nouns/adjectives to verbs though the use of suffixes)?
Thanks!
Regards,
Shizuka
Hi Shizuka,
Absolutely, suffixes can change many different word types into other word types (and we can on occasion have chains where a verb created by from a noun then can form a different noun, for example).
I suppose converting nouns and adjectives to verbs probably is less likely, as a lot of language for actions originates from behaviour rather than objects. Examples would most likely come from tool-related actions, though often these don’t use suffixes but rather the same word; e.g. to sail / a sail, to book / a book. I’ll have a think if I can get some other examples.
Best,
Phil
If you want to change a noun into an adjective in a sentence ,will the sentence change too.
Hi Vivan,
This really depends – do you have a specific example in mind? But it is likely to change the sentence structure where the noun is a subject or the verb is active. With state verbs that use a noun as a complement, however, the structure of the sentence might stay the same, but it will still change the meaning. At the very least, you’ll have to pay attention to determiners.
Phil
could you give us a complete list of this adjetives and nouns?
I’m afraid I don’t have one handy myself as there are a great many that can be made, but I will look into following this up with a bigger list of some sort.
How can we identify the correct suffix for a noun in adjectives that ends with ‘al’. Eg, infinitesimal, paternal etc. What suffix is proper to make it a noun?
Hi Darlington, I’m afraid to my knowledge there’s no simple rule to get to the noun there – except to say that actually you are removing a suffix rather than adding one (-al itself being a suffix).
In many cases it may simply be the case of removing “-al” or the last two syllables when “-al” does not connect easily to the root noun (e.g. with infinitesimal, the root noun is “infinte” – “infiniteal” would not work, so “-simal” is added). But unfortunately not all such adjectives are taken from the most common noun forms, such as your other example, “paternal” – the root “pater” refers to a father but is not used in modern English; whereas with “parental” we do use the root in English, “parent”.
This is such an informative blog/article. Thank you Phil. You’re a good addition to this world.
Thanks, I’m glad it was helpful!
Are there any suffixes in English that you can add to an adjective to make it mean “A person who is this adjective”? Like if someone is “big”, or “funny”, or “loquacious”, is there a noun they can be called derived from those words? Are there any linguistic terms for this sort of thing?
Hi Sasha, interesting question, I’m not sure of something specific off the topic of my head but I’d suggest that goes more into the area of compound nouns than suffixes; in that area, we could do this mostly using ‘man’ or ‘woman’ after something (or with more informal similar words like guy, gal, lad, lass, dude). So we do commonly say things like ‘big man’ or ‘funny man’ though not necessarily as one word (‘funnyman’ is one you may find has become more readily adopted, through frequent use). Otherwise we do have suffixes like ‘-ian’ or some specific ones like ‘-naut’ which refer to people doing a certain job/role, e.g. comedian, statistician, astronaut, but these generally relate to nouns rather than adjectives.