in english, measure words are used to show amounts of something that cannot be easily counted, also called uncountable nouns or mass nouns. for example, a person cannot usually say, "i have three gasolines", since gasoline is not easy to count. however, a person can measure how much gasoline there is or count how many containers are used to hold gasoline. in other words, people can say, "i have three gallons of gasoline", "i have three liters of gasoline", or "i have three tanks of gasoline."