Ordained Servant Online Is There Such a Thing as Christian
Education? David C. Noe Nouns are important. Along with verbs,
they are the sturdy workhorses of any language. Writers both
skillful and clumsy call upon them routinely to pull heavy
cartloads of meaning through the streets of prose and poetry
alike. The many things we want to say cannot be said without
nouns. In their concrete and abstract forms nouns undergird and
adorn all manner of important communication. There is a sense in
which the noun in any given expression is the essential element
while the accompanying adjective provides us with a shade or
modification of meaning. This is why in Latin, and in the
Romance languages which call her mother, the noun typically
precedes the adjective: Geneva pulchrior urbibus aliis est we
might say, or “Geneva is more beautiful than other cities.”
Geneva comes first, then that she is quite beautiful. English
convention is of course the opposite, as we seem to want to know
what kind a thing is before knowing wha