Usurping the dicitionary definition

Hi,

I think Aperisic alluded to this possible way of turning an uncountable noun, furniture, into a countable noun. I think his suggested way was turning it into types like 'sixteen century John Doe III furniture', 'seventeen century John Doe III furniture', 'eighteen century John Doe III furniture; now, I think, you have turned the word 'furnitrue' into different types in different time periods.

 How to use furniture in sentences properly is eluding me but my question now is "Furniture consist of large movable things, according to a typical definition (I think), and by turning/making it into various types and putting the article 'a' or 'an' infront of the word, do we still get to think of furniture as the word that meant to be consist of large movable objects/things and not necessarily mislead a person to think as just one object or thing?"          

furniture is not countable, and there's no way to make it so, except in the most theoretical way, which is not at all practical for real communication.  Nobody uses a furniture, a nice furniture, an old furniture, a nineteenth century furniture, a heavy furniture, or any such expression whatsoever.  They are all essentially impossible in English.

You may be attempting to generate this sort of thing using wine, a good wine, a tasty wine, and similar expressions as your model.  It won't work because the word furniture is not used that way.

To single out one of the elements that makes up furniture, you have to refer to it specifically:  a chair, a table, a lamp, etc.  Or, you can use the expression piece of furniture:

Have you ever had to look under a piece of furniture for a lost object?
That big chair is a beautiful piece of furniture.
The Wilsons ordered several new pieces of furniture for their living room.

CJ

I'm not CalifJim, but perhaps you don't mind.

Anonymous wrote:

Thank you, CalifJim. Would you mind telling me if the following, which eem to be examples given by Aperisic, is hovering in the theoretical realm and not touching the reality of things? I have furnitures in my house such as Louis XV, Louis XVI and  Louis XVII furniture.

I consider this utterly non-standard.

Personally, I would rewrite to insert the phrase 'many different types of ' like this: I have many different types of furniture in my house such as Louis XV, Louis XVI and Louis XVII furniture.

I would have written it that way too. See CJ's example regarding wine. It doesn't work that way with furniture.

How about this example given by Aperisic? Is this realistic or the most theoretical in nature to you? The furnitures we have are: commericial use furnture, counter system furniture, job station furniture, retail counter furniture.

I consider it, quite simply, wrong.