mass noun
Noun
Meaning
a noun that does not form plurals
Source: WordNetSynonyms
Hypernyms
Examples
Partitive article A partitive article is a type of indefinite article used with a mass noun such as water, to indicate a non-specific quantity of it.
For example, the same set of chairs can be referred to as "seven chairs" and as "furniture"; although both chair and furniture are referring to the same thing, the former is a count noun and the latter a mass noun.
Examples Below are examples of all the properties of count nouns holding for the count noun chair, but not for the mass noun furniture.
For example, one may say that "there's apple in this sauce," and then apple has cumulative reference, and, hence, is used as a mass noun.
If, instead, we had chosen to characterize count nouns as quantized nouns, and mass nouns as non-quantized ones, then we would (incorrectly) be led to expect committee to be a mass noun.
In casual speech, oxygen might be used as shorthand for "an oxygen atom", but in this case, it is not a mass noun, so one can refer to "multiple oxygens in the same molecule".