countable

CEFRC1

/ˈkaʊn.tə.bəl/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Able to be counted as separate items.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Finite or countably infinite; having a one-to-one correspondence (bijection) with a subset of the natural numbers.

Examples

  • "Apple" is a countable noun, so it makes grammatical sense to have five apples.

  • "Happiness" is not a countable noun. It would make no sense to have 18 happinesses.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
1
Synonyms
4

Also pronounced

  • [ˈkʰãʊ̯̃n.(ɾ)ə.bɫ̩]

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Capable of being counted; having a quantity.

  2. Countably infinite; having a bijection with the natural numbers.

  3. Freely usable with the indefinite article and with numbers.

More examples

In context

  • The indefinite article is used before countable nouns.

  • In these extracts the word abuse is used in the sense of ‘an individual piece of invective’ or ‘an abusive comment’ and is clearly a countable noun.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

In grammar, a blank noun can be used with numbers and has a plural form.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

From Middle English countable, equivalent to count (“to enumerate”) + -able.