While I know how to use the words that I use, I do not know if there is a term to describe words that are uncountable nouns, but at the same time are countable in other circumstances. "Cheese" is one example perhaps. I find researching this does not clarify anything – words seem to be countable and uncountable at the same time (depending on context) – is there a term for this or do we just have to accept the context rather than having an overriding term?
Learn English – Term for Uncountable Nouns, Mass Nouns which are sometimes countable
uncountable-nouns
Best Answer
The Wikipedia entry for mass nouns notes:
It also observes:
Cheese appears to be another of these nouns with both a mass sense and a count sense. The Oxford Dictionaries website includes the following as a definition of cheese:
It offers the following example sentence:
This is sufficient to reassure me that I could legitimately say, "Nine of the cheeses are finished and we have three more to go." The word cheese can, then function as both a mass noun and a count noun, meaning slightly different things in the two uses.
It also seems clear that most mass nouns can make an appearance as a count noun. The Wikipedia article cited above notes:
I've tried but haven't been able to find an example of a noun that cannot become a count noun in this way.
I admit that I would like the sentence above better if it said "7 brands of gasoline" or "7 samples of gasoline", but nothing about it seems to me wrong or even particularly surprising. Even abstract nouns seem to be amenable to this transformation: