Definition:
The determiner a or an, which marks an unspecified count noun. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "Though an old man I am but a young gardener."
(Thomas Jefferson) - "If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves."
(Lane Kirkland) - "Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
(Albert Schweitzer) - "I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze.
With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn.
I courted her proudly but now she is gone,
Gone as the season she's taken."
(Bob Dylan, "Ballad in Plain D") - "It's never just a game when you're winning."
(George Carlin) - "A's rightful literary place is in narrative. In the opening line of a novel, a story, or a fairy tale, as we begin to be told what happened once upon a time, the natural progression is to be introduced to a person and situation, and then gradually be filled in on their particularity. And so Hardy commences Tess of the D'Urbervilles: 'On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward.'"
(Ben Yagoda, When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It, Broadway Books, 2007) - "Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still."
(Nancy Friday) - "Count nouns denote people and things which are treated as units. They refer to objects, people, abstract entities, etc. which are perceived as easily counted. Count nouns have both a singular and a plural form. The indefinite article a/an can be used with count nouns in the singular. Numerals can also be used in front of count nouns:
I'd prefer a cat to a a dog. Cats are interesting.
Singular count nouns cannot stand without a determiner."
Three cars were involved in the accident.
(Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Pronunciation: in-DEF-i-nit ART-i-kull
