Countable and uncountable nouns

Question

I understand a countable noun is presented by a number and it can be presentd in both the singular form and plural form and an uncountable noun can not be presented in the singular form and can not be presented by a number, However I am struggling to find out if DREAM and IMAGINATION is a countable noun or uncountable please can you help.

Thanks in advance

Kooyeen · Accepted Answer

You can count dreams: I had a dream, then another, then yet another... three dreams. But imagination seems to be uncountable. Anyway, to find out whether a word is countable or not, and if there are exceptions, you should always look it up in a dictionary.

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/dream_1

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/imagination

You can see that they say "imagination" can be countable too and they give the example "Children often have very vivid imaginations", but if you look at all the other examples you will see it's basically always uncountable. Just look up the words you are unsure about and check the examples as well.

Anonymous · Answer

The noun "dream" is countable.

We can consider that "imagination" is either uncountable or countable, See the definition at Cambridge Dictionaries Online: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define_b.asp?key=39103&dict=CALD.

Here's an example to show how "imagination" is countable.

Wow, Jimmy, you have quite an imagination! I never could have thought of that.

Uncountable nouns are not preceded by the indefinite artciles "a" and "an". If a noun is preceded by an indefinite article, it means we can count it.

Some nouns are both countable and uncountable.

Countable and uncountable nouns

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