I was told that abstract nouns don't get articles. (You can see here for example). But I found many abstract nouns that get indefinite articles, such as: "of a truth", "of a size", "of a lifetime", "of a certain age", "a love", "a wish", "a difference", "a power" and more. What is the explanation for that?
Learn English – Why many abstract nouns get an indefinite article while it’s taught that abstract nouns shouldn’t get it
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Best Answer
I think you might be getting stuck on the idea that a noun is either abstract or not abstract (i.e., concrete). This is not quite correct. The same noun is sometimes abstract and sometimes not, depending on how you use it.
Let's use water as an example, because while it isn't an abstract noun, it works the same way and may be easier to visualize.
Here, we are talking about water in an abstract sense: water as a concept, any and all water. So, we don't use an article.
But once we start talking about a specific instance (in Andrew's terms, a "concrete example") of water, the noun is no longer being used in an abstract sense.
Now, we are referring to some specific water, some water that actually exists in the world. Once we do that, we have to use the article.
So it is with abstract nouns. Andrew's example with size and weight is an excellent one. In the first example, the officer needs to think about size and weight while loading and unloading cargo. In this case, size and weight are ideas, so they are abstract.
But when you associate the concepts of size and weight with a concrete object, such as a container, they stop being abstract. Now, they are characteristics or properties of an existing object, and therefore a specific instance of the two ideas: the size and the weight of the container.
You can perhaps use water again to help with this. Water means all water. As soon as you qualify water, it becomes the water: it is now only that subset of all water that fits the qualification. So, the water in my swimming pool, the water in the sink, the water in my glass, the water in Lake Superior, the water in the Atlantic Ocean, and so on.
So, it might help you to think of weight as all weight, weight not applied to anything concrete. But as soon as you qualify it, it becomes the weight: the weight of a bowling ball, the weight of a feather, the weight of a car, and so on.
Perhaps that helps.