How it works
This random noun generator draws from 700 common nouns, from lighthouse to hedgehog to curiosity, and prints a short definition under each one. The All nouns menu narrows the draw to people, places, things, animals, food, nature, or ideas and feelings. Its Easy words choice keeps to the 168 nouns a beginning reader knows. Take away the words you do not want and press again, then share the set.
Read the full guide
Draw, keep and take away
Five nouns are on the page when it opens. Press Pick 5 new nouns for five more. On a keyboard the space bar does the same. For a longer list, press Add another at its end; the × on a row makes it shorter. To keep a noun, take the others away with the × at the end of their rows: the next press fills the gaps and leaves what you kept. No word comes back until you have seen every noun in the group you chose. Copy the list copies each word with its definition on the line under it.
Concrete nouns and abstract nouns
The first six groups in the All nouns menu hold concrete nouns: people, places, things, animals, food and nature, all of which you can see or touch. The Ideas and feelings group holds 130 abstract nouns, such as patience, rumor and democracy, which you can only think about. A quick test for a class is to ask whether you could put it in a wheelbarrow. Every word is a common noun, so there are no names of people, cities or brands.
How the list was made
The nouns are ones a school reader meets, and each definition is our own, short enough to read aloud in one breath. A definition gives the most common sense of the word, and a few give two, as the lines for letter, pepper and conductor do. Spelling is American. The full list is printed below the tool, grouped by kind, so you can check that it suits your class first.
- Sorting task: press Add another until the list holds 10 on All nouns and ask the class to sort them into person, place, thing and idea. Check the answers against the list under the tool.
- Countable or not? Draw five and ask which can take a number in front. You can have three bridges, but not three furnitures, three rices or three advices.
- Draw two nouns and join them into a compound that does not exist yet, such as a cloud library or a hedgehog bakery, then write what it sells.
- For a poem or a song, draw one concrete noun and one from Ideas and feelings, and use the first as a picture of the second.
Questions and answers
How many nouns are in the list?
There are 700: 122 people, 89 places, 98 things, 72 animals, 88 foods, 101 nature words and 130 ideas and feelings. The Easy words group cuts across all seven kinds and holds 168 short, early-reader nouns such as barn, frog, wind and hill. All 700 are single common nouns in the singular, apart from a few that are always plural, such as ruins and leftovers.
Can I make a random list of words for a memory test?
Yes. Press Add another until the list holds 10 or 20, then read the words aloud at a steady pace or show them for one minute. Turn the screen away and ask people to write down what they remember. Concrete nouns are easier to recall than abstract ones, so choose Things in the All nouns menu for a gentle round and Ideas and feelings for a hard one. This is a classroom and party game, not a health check.
What is the quickest way to get one random noun?
Press the button and take the first noun. One noun appears in large type with its meaning underneath, and each press gives another with no repeats. More filters, under the All nouns menu, narrows the draw to nouns that begin with B, for example.
Are there proper nouns or plural nouns?
No proper nouns. A proper noun names one particular person, place or brand and takes a capital letter, and a fair list of those would be a different page. Plurals are left out too, because you can make them yourself: most add s, a few change shape, as mouse, goose, calf and leaf do, and sheep, deer, fish and moose stay the same.
Where do the definitions come from?
Each is one plain sentence in our own words, giving the sense most people mean, and none is copied from a dictionary. They were reviewed on 18 September 2026. For every sense of a word and its history, look it up in a dictionary such as Wiktionary. If you spot a mistake, tell us through the contact page and we will fix it.