Nouns that you would never say "the" before?

July 9, 2021 1:41 PM

This is similar but not quite the same as countable vs noncountable. I'm trying to think of a noun that can't very logically be preceded by "the" and the only one I can think of right now is "outer space" - because there's only one. But this could also apply to concepts and intangibles; are there examples I'm missing? TIA!
posted by ftm to Writing & Language (28 answers total)

It always used to be "going to the prom", and now it's just "going to prom".

Canadians and the British don't put "the" in front of university or hospital.

Americans generally would only put "the" in front of college if it was "the college of something".
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:46 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

There's only one universe, but we invariably talk about "the universe". I think the property of outer space that makes us not use "the" may be the fact that it's non-boundable as well as non-countable.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:48 PM on July 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

The phrase "zero article" may help your search.
posted by nat at 1:55 PM on July 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

Sports, as well. Not sporting events (like "the baseball game") or the ball/instrument ("pass me the baseball") but the entire sport ("the baseball has a long history").
posted by Meldanthral at 2:03 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is pretty much already within the ambit of your example, but would 'infinity' qualify?

I never hear anyone talk about 'the infinity', although there are so many it seems like it would be possible (are there a countable or uncountable number of infinities, by the way?).
posted by jamjam at 2:05 PM on July 9, 2021

People of a certain generation log onto The Facebook and The Twitters.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:05 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Right. It's also common, but sometimes considered incorrect, for people to refer to diseases with a "the," as in "Aunt Jeanie has the diabetes" or "well you know he gets the migraines."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:09 PM on July 9, 2021

I was just reading a study about this with respect to country names. We don’t usually say “the France” in English, but there are cases where it’s permissible (e.g. “the France of her childhood”). In the same way, you can say “ He longed for the outer space he had always dreamed of seeing in person”, or something like that.

I can’t think of an instance in which these words take determiners:
-temporal terms like “today”, “now”
-person names (some proper nouns take a determiner, but person names don’t in English)
-possessive pronouns that replace noun phrases, like mine/yours/hers/ours

And there are many words that don’t take determiners in certain syntactic positions: you mentioned mass nouns, but also plurals (“Dogs are my favorite animal”, not “*The dogs are my favorite animal”) and many, like... conceptual words? such as in “Childhood is an important time”.
posted by chaiyai at 2:23 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Re: country names -- they get the definite article when they're groups (the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, the Philippines). All others, no article. But those are proper nouns, so different rules may apply. And I just realized there's exceptions: for example, China vs. the People's Republic of China.
posted by Rash at 2:26 PM on July 9, 2021

The Outer Space Treaty; living in the now; the Steele dossier... it's going to be hard to find any noun which can never follow "the", because English can do a lot of things with "the". Hell, there's a band called The The.

But, OP, perhaps you want to carve some of these examples out as not being in the spirit of the question. (A possible razor is constituency -- "the outer space" is not a constituent in "the Outer Space Treaty".)
posted by aws17576 at 2:44 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's an intra-California war over whether a highway is "101" (Bay Area) or "the 101" (LA); likewise, "I-5" or "the 5." The kind of thing where when you get it wrong, people are like, "You're not from around here, are you." But that's a "proper noun" example, and I'm not sure if you're meaning to differentiate between the definite article in front of any noun, or only in front of non-proper nouns.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 2:50 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

horticulture
posted by TheCavorter at 3:13 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Search term: "anarthrous" is the descriptor for such nouns.
posted by away for regrooving at 3:57 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

> I'm trying to think of a noun that can't very logically be preceded by "the" and the only one I can think of right now is "outer space" - because there's only one

Complementing heatherlogan's point, if you are talking about a thing that belongs to a class of things and it is understood that there is exactly one possible thing in that class, saying "the thing" not "a thing" helps to emphasise the uniqueness. Whereas "a thing" would communicate that there may be more than one thing in the thing class.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:01 PM on July 9, 2021

The Outer Space Treaty

Outer Space in this example is used as an adjective, not a noun. "The" goes with treaty, not outer space.
posted by Dolley at 4:03 PM on July 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

> horticulture

"the horticulture industry" or "the horticulture sector" is relatively common. We can do even better and just talk about the horticulture of a thing:

> In some respects, the appearance of Kalanchoe ‘Margrit’s Magic’ is reminiscent of material widely known as Kalanchoe ‘Tessa’; the latter is a cultivar name that is deeply entrenched in the horticulture of Kalanchoe (Purveur & Harbour, 1996)

-- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/horticulture

If there were different competing horticultures you could talk about a horticulture of a thing. Potential for horticultural exchange.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:06 PM on July 9, 2021

I think it is "Da Bronx" not The Bronx which is the only NYC borough with a the/da in front of it.
posted by AugustWest at 4:07 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

I thought of one: nature, in the sense of "the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. 'the breathtaking beauty of nature,' "

and not in the sense of "the basic or inherent features of something, especially when seen as characteristic of it. 'helping them to realize the nature of their problems.' "

Definitions and examples lifted from dictionary.com
posted by Dolley at 4:09 PM on July 9, 2021

> nature, in the sense of "the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. 'the breathtaking beauty of nature,'

Throughout the many universes that comprise the multiverse, locals proudly proclaim "the breathtaking beauty of nature", implicitly talking about the nature local to their universe. However, when we polled a panel of 100 leading multiverse spelunkers, 57 agreed that the nature of universe aleph-470-epilson-sharp was superior. Book today and experience the superior and delightful nature of universe aleph-470-epilson-sharp during your next holiday!
posted by are-coral-made at 4:21 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

I can’t think of an instance in which these words take determiners:
-temporal terms like “today”, “now”

Tell that to Wayne and Garth. Or Edna Mode.
posted by praemunire at 7:42 PM on July 9, 2021

"the horticulture industry" or "the horticulture sector" is relatively common

In those examples, "the" refers to industry not horticulture, sort of like "the legal sector"
posted by M. at 8:01 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

logically be preceded

Well, there's your problem there. There is no logic behind all the rules and the exceptions to those rules. It's just a mess of post hoc rationalizations that non-native speakers have to struggle mastering if they don't want to sound off.

You can say there are general rules, like you need to use either an article or possessive adjective with a preposition and a noun ("go to the park" or "go to my locker" is OK, "go to park" and "go to locker" are not). And there are classes of exceptions to these rules (go to school, go to work, go to class, go to church, go to bed, go to jail, go to hospital if you're in the UK).

You could come up with a bunch of post hoc explanations for these exceptions. For example, when you're basically only referring to going to a place, you use an article. Going to the park or going to the train station basically only infers going to those places, so you use an article. But when it means something other than just visiting, you don't use an article. Going to jail doesn't mean visiting a jail, but rather you're being imprisoned. Going to bed doesn't mean you're visiting your bed; it means the act of going to your bed and then sleeping. Going to church doesn't really mean you're visiting a church, but rather you're going there to pray. But what about going to the bathroom? When people go to the bathroom, they most certainly aren't just visiting a lavatory, but rather using the facilities within. Etc. etc.

There are so many exceptions to exceptions of the rules in English that it's pretty much futile to ever declare something "logically" follows. The only reason why you can't say "go to the outer space" is because native speakers don't say that.
posted by alidarbac at 10:25 PM on July 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Go to heaven, be in hell.
For Reasons. (only half joking here)
posted by M. at 12:21 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Even words that are normally used without an article can be used with one in thought experiments.

Try a frame like this: "You know about outer space. But there could be other universes, and the outer space you know is not the only kind that could exist."

That should work for other things that don't normally take "the", like infinity, reality, France, Metafilter, etc.
posted by zompist at 12:31 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

The outer space of my dreams.
The Metafilter of my dreams.
The France of my dreams.
The infinity of my dreams. (The one in my dreams is a lot smaller and easy to manage than the regular everyday infinity.)
The horticulture of my dreams.
The nature of my dreams.
The dogs of my dreams are my favorite animal (they don't slobber as much--or shed hair).
The today of my dreams is a lot longer then the normal everyday today is.
The baseball of my dreams has only three fielders.

You can do similar things with "of my imagination" or as mentioned upthread, sci-fi settings, comparing/contrasting different time frames, and so on. Anything that allows you to separate out what is usually the one generic thing of its particular class, to become something different in Frame #1 than in Frame #2.

"The Nature of Frame #1 is a very different thing than the Nature of Frame #2" - this works for almost every example given upthread.

Also: The long now. This is a super-common phrase nowadays, and "the" definitely goes with "now" and not "long". You can also talk about things like "the now of the future".

The possessives are a bit tougher (my/mine/your/yours/her/hers etc). You can always go with things like "The your in your second sentence should be you're."

But that is cheating a bit, as it is actually referring to the written word "your" rather than the concept of something belong to you.

"The mine and the yours of Judy's world are a lot different then my mine and your yours."

"The my and the mine of the past have become very different things, now that we have entered the grand new era of Utopian Space Communism. Come to think of it--the outer space of the past is an outdated concept, as well. The outer space of the past is the inner space of the future."
posted by flug at 2:35 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yesterday I learned that, while we say"The NFL" and "The NBA" when referring to the US sports leagues, one never says "The MLS."
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:30 AM on July 10, 2021

I'm not convinced that it's because there's only one outer space, but rather that it's something to do with a type of conceptually bounded/boundless thing. Such as infinity, love or reality. Or space, deep space, and time.

But I'm confused by the void and the future.

There are also all the isms, which don't take 'the' and are more like conceptual states or ways of being.

I've been thinking about this on and off for a month and this is all I've got so far.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:07 PM on August 2, 2021

The frame I've been using to test this is, "It's a known fact of [insert noun] that…" if that helps anyone. As in:

Most nouns fit here:
It's a known fact of [any common plural noun] that…
It's a known fact of [any Proper noun] that…
It's a known fact of [any subject, ism or emotional concept] that…

Counter evidence (doesn't fit above, or below):
It's a known fact of the universe that…
It's a known fact of the void that…
It's a known fact of the future that…

Target frames (looking for more of these, and what they have in common with each other, but not with the above):
It's a known fact of outer space that…
It's a known fact of infinity that…
posted by iamkimiam at 3:18 PM on August 2, 2021 [1 favorite]