Hello:
I would be grateful for your thoughts as to whether or not embarrassment
is a countable or uncountable noun or both. In the phrase “to protect the
State Department from political embarrassment” it seems to me to be an
uncountable noun; yet in the phrase “an embarrassment of riches,”
embarrassment follows the property of a countable noun, i.e., it can be
modified by the indefinite article.
Can one say I faced several embarrassments as opposed
to I faced several kinds of embarrassment? i.e., embarrassment as
a count noun is an instance of embarrassment whereas embarrassment as a
noncount noun is the state of being embarrassed? And is there a reliable resource
for checking the status of common nouns?
Thanks for your thoughts—
Natalie Gerber
SUNY Fredonia
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/