非计数名词是指不能被计数或分割的事物的名词（如氧气、音乐、家具、蒸汽）。也被称为质量名词。与计数名词形成对比。

除少数例外，非计数名词采用单数动词，仅用于单数形式。

许多名词既有可数的用法，也有不可数的用法，如可数的“打鸡蛋”和不可数的成语“脸上的蛋”

实例和意见

"Arm in arm, the King and Bartholomew went down to the counting room to count out the gold."

（苏斯博士，《巴塞洛缪·库宾斯的500顶帽子》，先锋出版社，1938年）

"Keep all trash and garbage away from your cat, and your cat out of trash cans and garbage bins."

（温迪·克里斯滕森，《智胜猫》，里昂出版社，2004年）

"She considered, maybe for the first time, how lucky she was to be able to pick up the phone and call her mother whenever she needed some bad advice."

（Brady Udall，《孤独的一夫多妻主义者》，W.W.诺顿，2010）

"The novel manufactured to entertain great multitudes of people must be considered exactly like a cheap soap or a cheap perfume, or cheap furniture."

（威拉·凯瑟，“小说《德默布尔》，编辑，1922年8月26日）

"I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade, and though the news was rather sad, well I just had to laugh."

（约翰·列侬和保罗·麦卡特尼，《生命中的一天》，佩珀中士的孤独之心俱乐部乐队，1967年）

可以使用或不使用限定词的非计数名词的类型

" - Abstractions: democracy, education, health, knowledge, love An education is of utmost importance. Education is crucial to economic security. - Groups of things: clothing, equipment, garbage, homework, money, traffic The homework for French class is time-consuming. I spend a lot of time doing homework. - Substances: air, blood, coffee, ice, rice, tea, water, wood This tea is watery. She prefers tea for breakfast."

（谢丽尔·格伦和洛蕾塔·格雷，《霍奇斯·哈布雷斯手册》，第18版，沃兹沃思，2013年）

"[T]here is a resolute sadness between X and me that our marriage is over, a sadness that does not feel sad."

（理查德·福特，体育记者，《复古》，1986年）​

非计数名词和不定冠词

"Some noncount nouns accept the indefinite article when they are modified . . ., e.g.: They are doing a brisk business. (NOT * a business.)​ In some cases no modification seems to be required. In the following example, however, modification is in fact implied:​ She has had an education. ['a good education']"

（伦道夫·奎克等人，《英语综合语法》，朗曼，1985）

"How do you go to a woman who lives at the foot of a mountain of sadness and shovel more around her ankles, the sadnesses of strangers?"

（瑞克·布拉格，除了《守望者》，兰登书屋，1999年）

量化非计数名词

"What about 'a loaf of bread' or 'a slice of bread'? Aren't these count nouns? The noncount noun, e.g. bread is still a noncount noun. What has happened is that we have added a quantifiying phrase, a loaf or a slice, before the noncount noun, bread. "Many noncount nouns can be quantified, that is made countable, by adding certain phrases before them: a grain of sand, three bottles of water, a piece of advice. When one of these phrases comes before a noun, we call the entire group of words a noun phrase."

（Andrea DeCapua，《教师语法：母语和非母语人士美式英语指南》，斯普林格，2008）

非计数名词与质量名词

"Non-count nouns are often called 'mass' nouns. We have preferred 'non-count,' in part because it reflects clearly the test we use for determining whether a noun is count or non-count, in part because 'mass' is not suitable for the full range of non-count nouns. The term 'mass' is readily applicable with nouns like water or coal that denote substances but it is less evident that it applies transparently to abstract non-count nouns such as knowledge, spelling, work."

（罗德尼·赫德尔斯顿和杰弗里·普勒姆，《剑桥英语语法》，剑桥大学出版社，2002年）