Clearly both, as your examples demonstrate.
Sometimes we use it as a mass noun, sometimes as a count noun.
Dick Veit
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
From:
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007
3:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: question on countable and
uncountable nouns
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