Uncount Nouns

An uncount noun has no plural form.
We can only talk about quantity, not number.

For example, we can say

and all of these have a singular noun.
We do not say milks.

Some common nouns in English like information are uncount nouns even though they have plurals in other languages:

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

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


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.

However, accommodation, money and traffic cannot be made countable in this way. We need to use other expressions:

I've lived in three apartments. ✔
bits of accommodation ✖

Smith received three large sums of money. ✔
pieces of money ✖

We got stuck in two traffic jams. ✔
pieces of traffic ✖

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 food. ✔
foods ✖

We bought some new furniture. ✔
furnitures ✖

That's useful information. ✔
a 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