Random Noun Generator With a Definition for Every Noun: 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. Chips narrow the draw to people, places, things, animals, food, nature, or ideas and feelings, and an Easy words chip keeps to the 168 nouns a beginning reader knows. Lock the words you like, swap the rest and share the set.
Draw, lock and swap
Five nouns are on the page when it opens. Press New nouns or the space bar for five more, or change the size to 1, 10 or 20. If all you want is for someone to give you a random noun, size 1 shows a single word in large type. The padlock holds a noun while the others change, and the swap arrows replace only that card. No word comes back until you have seen every noun that passes your chip. Copy all copies the words without the definitions.
Concrete nouns and abstract nouns
The first six chips hold concrete nouns: people, places, things, animals, food and nature, all of which you can see or touch. The Ideas and feelings chip 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
We chose nouns that a school reader meets, wrote each definition ourselves, and kept every one 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.
Tips
- Sorting task: draw 10 with no chip chosen and ask the class to sort them into person, place, thing and idea. Tap each chip afterwards to check.
- 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.
- The noun of the day is the same for every visitor until midnight. Write it on the board and ask for a sentence with it as the subject.
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 chip 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. Set the size to 10 or 20, read the words aloud at a steady pace or show them for one minute, then turn the screen away and ask people to write down what they remember. Concrete nouns are easier to recall than abstract ones, so use the Things chip 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?
Set the size to 1 and press the space bar. One noun appears in large type with its meaning underneath, and each press gives another with no repeats. That suits drawing games and improv scenes. The starting-letter 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?
We wrote them. 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.