noun

1. (grammar, strictly) A word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as person, animal, place, word, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea: one of the basic parts of speech in many languages, including English.Examples: "Records have been broken, races have been dedicated, dreams have been dreamed, starts have been falsed and nouns have been verbed."; "Communication is a kind of beauty, he said – and “beauty manifests itself from the noun itself, without strawberries on the cake.”"

2. (grammar, now rare, loosely) Either a word that can be used to refer to a person, animal, place, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality or idea, or a word that modifies or describes a previous word or its referent; a substantive or adjective, sometimes also including other parts of speech such as numeral or pronoun.Examples: "Q. What is a Noun? A. The Name of a Thing. Q. How many Sorts of Nouns are there? [...] A. A Noun Substantive, and a Noun Adjective."; "A Noun is a word which serves to name and distinguish some thing; [...]. There are two sorts of nouns; one is called a noun substantive, and the other a noun adjective."; "The first part of a compound word is either a noun (substantive, adjective, or numeral), an adverb, or a preposition, and in a very few cases a verb."archaicbroadly

3. (computing) An object within a user interface to which a certain action or transformation (i.e., verb) is applied.Examples: "Nouns are the data; verbs are the data transformations, and therefore verbs represent much of the complexity of systems."; "You choose either (1) the verb (change font) first and then select the noun (the paragraph) to which the verb should apply or (2) the noun first and then apply the verb."; "Thus, in essence, the mouse provides a capability for picking among a set of nouns (for instance, the file to which to apply some action) and verbs (such as "edit" or "insert")"