A fear of

Question

A fear of spiders is known as arachnophobia.I thought "fear" is an uncountable noun. How do we know when to use indefinite article before an uncountable noun?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Lots of nouns go both ways. "Fear" is one of them. You can use "the" with uncountables to refer to a specific instance. "It wasn't the immorality that was stopping him, it was the fear." "Add the milk and beat well."

CalifJim · Answer

JigneshbharatiI thought "fear" is was an uncountable noun. How do we know when to use an indefinite article before an uncountable noun?

The classification of nouns into countable and uncountable is not fixed in stone. Yes, a lot of nouns belong only to one or the other category, but in many cases countable nouns are used as uncountable nouns, and uncountable nouns are used as countable nouns.

In this case an article is completely optional. It can be "fear of spiders" or "a fear of spiders" or "the fear of spiders". So if you were writing this and you wrote "fear of spiders" because 'fear' is uncountable, you would have been correct.

You learn the typical usage in your grammar books, and then you learn the variations by doing a lot of reading and imitating.

CJ

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