“What is a noun?”
“Please, my lord, need I answer that?” asked Adjective.
“Certainly,” replied the Judge.
“It is not fair,” said Adjective; “nouns are not my words.”
“But you must know what a noun is, in order that you may use your adjectives properly.”
“Of course I know what a noun is—it is a name, the name of anything.”
“Then do you know the difference between a noun and an adjective?” asked Serjeant Parsing.
“Certainly. A noun is the name of a thing. An adjective tells you something about the thing the noun has named; whether it is large or small, or what colour it is, or how much there is of it, or whether there are few things or many, or something of that sort.”
“Quite so; but can you find out at once, without much thinking, whether a word is a noun or an adjective?”
“If you can put an article before a word, then it is a noun,” answered Adjective; “as, a man, the dog.”