Greek turns adjectives into nouns as easily as breathing. Give an adjective an article and drop its noun, and what is left does the noun's whole job: ο μικρός ("the little one"), οι πλούσιοι ("the rich"), ένας ξένος ("a stranger"), το καλό ("the good"). English has to add a word — the little one, the rich people — or reach for a suffix (good → goodness). Greek needs neither; the article carries it. This page is the adjective-specific corner of a broader mechanism: the article can nominalize almost anything — adverbs, whole clauses, quoted words — and that full range is on the article as nominalizer. Here we stay with the adjective, because it is the raw material this trick uses most, and because gender and number turn one adjective into several different nouns.
One adjective, several nouns
The single most useful thing to grasp is that the ending you choose decides what kind of noun you get. Take μικρός ("small") and run it through the genders and numbers:
| Form | Reads as | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ο μικρός | a male person | the little boy, the youngest (son) |
| η μικρή | a female person | the little girl, the youngest (daughter) |
| οι μικροί | a class of people | the little ones, the young |
| το μικρό | a thing / a young animal | the small one; the baby (of an animal) |
| τα μικρά | things / small details | the small ones; the little things |
The rule of thumb is worth memorising because it does so much work: masculine and feminine point at people; neuter points at things and abstractions; a masculine plural names a whole class. A Greek listener decodes ο μικρός as a person and το μικρό as an object without a moment's thought, purely from the gender.
Ο μικρός πάει ακόμα νηπιαγωγείο, η μεγάλη είναι κιόλας στο γυμνάσιο.
o mikrós pái akóma nipiaghoyío, i megháli íne kiólas sto yimnásio
The little one's still in kindergarten; the older girl is already in secondary school.
People: the definite and the indefinite
With a definite article you point at a specific person known from context — ο υπεύθυνος ("the person in charge"), η καινούρια ("the new girl", at work). With the indefinite ένας/μία, or with no article at all in the plural, you get the "a person who is X" reading — an anonymous someone characterised by the quality.
Με σταμάτησε ένας ξένος στον δρόμο και μου ζήτησε φωτιά.
me stamátise énas ksénos ston dhrómo ke mu zítise fotiá
A stranger stopped me in the street and asked me for a light.
Τον ξέρω ελάχιστα — είναι ένας γνωστός από τη δουλειά, όχι φίλος.
ton kséro eláchista — íne énas ghnostós apó ti dhuliá, óchi fílos
I barely know him — he's an acquaintance from work, not a friend.
Both ξένος ("foreign/strange") and γνωστός ("known") are perfectly ordinary adjectives; the article promotes them to people. Note how ένας γνωστός — literally "a known one" — is exactly the Greek for "an acquaintance", a noun English has to build from a different root entirely.
A whole class: the masculine plural
The masculine plural with the definite article is Greek's standard way of naming a social group defined by a property — the rich, the poor, the young, the unemployed, the dead. This is a live, everyday construction, not a literary flourish.
| Greek | English |
|---|---|
| οι πλούσιοι / οι φτωχοί | the rich / the poor |
| οι νέοι / οι μεγάλοι | the young / the grown-ups |
| οι άνεργοι | the unemployed |
| οι νεκροί / οι ζωντανοί | the dead / the living |
Οι πλούσιοι γίνονται πλουσιότεροι και οι φτωχοί φτωχότεροι, το ίδιο έργο πάντα.
i plúsii yínonde plusióteri ke i ftochí ftochóteri, to ídhio érgho pánda
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer — the same old story.
Η φορολόγηση των πλουσίων είναι διαρκές πολιτικό ζήτημα σε όλη την Ευρώπη.
i forolóyisi ton plusíon íne dhiarkés politikó zítima se óli tin Evrópi
Taxing the rich is a perennial political issue across Europe.
That second sentence carries a quiet but important point: the nominalized adjective still declines like an adjective. Οι πλούσιοι (nominative) becomes των πλουσίων (genitive) — the ending shifts exactly as it would if the noun άνθρωποι were still there. Nominalizing an adjective does not freeze it; it keeps its full paradigm, so it can be a subject, an object or a possessor like any other noun. See adjective agreement for the paradigm it is drawing on.
Nationalities and languages
Nationalities sit at a special crossroads of this pattern, and Greek splits them neatly by gender and number. The person is a masculine or feminine noun, written with a capital: ο Έλληνας, η Ελληνίδα, ο Γάλλος, η Γαλλίδα. The language is the neuter plural of the same family, written lower-case: τα ελληνικά, τα γαλλικά, τα αγγλικά.
Στο ξενοδοχείο ήταν κυρίως Γάλλοι και Ιταλοί, ελάχιστοι Έλληνες.
sto ksenodhochío ítan kiríos Gháli ke Italí, eláchisti Élines
At the hotel it was mostly French and Italian people, very few Greeks.
Τα ελληνικά της είναι άψογα, δεν ξεχωρίζεις καθόλου προφορά.
ta eliniká tis íne ápsogha, dhen ksechorízis kathólu proforá
Her Greek is flawless — you can't detect any accent at all.
The full set — how the nationality noun, the adjective and the language name relate — is on nationalities and languages. The takeaway for this page is that τα ελληνικά ("the Greek language") is just the neuter plural of an adjective doing exactly the "things/abstraction" job you saw with τα μικρά.
When the adjective has frozen into a noun
At the far end of this process, some adjectives have nominalized so thoroughly that a modern speaker no longer feels the adjective underneath — they are simply nouns now, listed as such in the dictionary. The original noun has been dropped and forgotten:
- το κινητό — mobile phone (from κινητό τηλέφωνο, "moving telephone")
- το γλυκό / τα γλυκά — dessert / sweets (from γλυκό φαγητό)
- το προσωπικό — staff, personnel (from προσωπικό "personal")
- το μυστικό — a secret (from μυστικός "secret")
- τα ψιλά — small change (from ψιλά "fine, thin")
- το ψητό, τα κατεψυγμένα — roast meat, frozen food
Ξέχασα το κινητό μου στο αυτοκίνητο, γύρνα πίσω σε παρακαλώ.
kséchasa to kinitó mu sto aftokínito, yírna píso se parakaló
I left my mobile in the car — turn back, please.
Για επιδόρπιο έχουμε γλυκά και φρούτα, πάρε ό,τι θέλεις.
ya epidhórpio échume ghliká ke frúta, páre óti thélis
For dessert we've got sweets and fruit — take whatever you like.
Το προσωπικό του νοσοκομείου έκανε τετράωρη στάση εργασίας σήμερα.
to prosopikó tu nosokomíu ékane tetráori stási erghasías símera
The hospital staff held a four-hour work stoppage today.
These are the endpoint of the same road οι πλούσιοι is on — an adjective that took an article, lost its noun, and never gave it back. Recognising the mechanism is what lets you understand a word like το κινητό the first time you meet it, instead of memorising it as an unrelated vocabulary item.
Common Mistakes
1. Using a neuter singular for a group of people. A class of people is the masculine plural; the neuter singular gives you an abstraction or a thing.
❌ Το άνεργο χρειάζεται στήριξη, όχι διαλέξεις.
Incorrect — a group of people takes the masculine plural: οι άνεργοι.
✅ Οι άνεργοι χρειάζονται στήριξη, όχι διαλέξεις.
i áneryi chriázonde stíriksi, óchi dhialéksis
Unemployed people need support, not lectures.
2. Keeping the masculine form when you mean a woman. The gender of the nominalized adjective must match the person.
❌ Η καινούριος στη δουλειά είναι πολύ ικανός.
Incorrect for a woman — both the noun-adjective and its complement are feminine: η καινούρια … ικανή.
✅ Η καινούρια στη δουλειά είναι πολύ ικανή και οργανωτική.
i kenúria sti dhuliá íne polí ikaní ke orghanotikí
The new woman at work is very capable and organised.
3. Forgetting that it still declines. Once nominalized, the adjective takes case endings like any noun.
❌ Η ζωή των φτωχοί δεν άλλαξε καθόλου με τα μέτρα.
Incorrect — a genitive phrase needs the genitive: των φτωχών.
✅ Η ζωή των φτωχών δεν άλλαξε καθόλου με τα νέα μέτρα.
i zoí ton ftochón dhen álakse kathólu me ta néa métra
The lives of the poor didn't change at all with the new measures.
4. Lower-casing a nationality used as a noun (or capitalising the language). The person is capitalised (Έλληνας); the language is lower-case (ελληνικά).
❌ Παντρεύτηκε έναν έλληνα και μαθαίνει τώρα Ελληνικά.
Incorrect — the person is capitalised (Έλληνα), the language is lower-case (ελληνικά).
✅ Παντρεύτηκε έναν Έλληνα και μαθαίνει τώρα ελληνικά.
pandréftike énan Élina ke mathéni tóra eliniká
She married a Greek man and is now learning Greek.
Key Takeaways
- Article + adjective = noun. This is the same nominalizing article treated in full on the article as nominalizer; here it works on adjectives specifically.
- Gender and number choose the reading: masculine/feminine = a person (ο μικρός, η μικρή), masculine plural = a class of people (οι πλούσιοι, οι άνεργοι), neuter = a thing or abstraction (το καλό, το κινητό).
- Works with the indefinite article too: ένας ξένος (a stranger), ένας γνωστός (an acquaintance).
- Nationalities: the person is a capitalised noun (ο Έλληνας), the language is the lower-case neuter plural (τα ελληνικά) — see nationalities and languages.
- The nominalized adjective still declines (οι πλούσιοι → των πλουσίων); it is not frozen.
- Many everyday nouns are frozen nominalizations — το κινητό, τα γλυκά, το προσωπικό, τα ψιλά — where the original noun has been dropped and forgotten.
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Start learning Greek →Related Topics
- The Article as NominalizerB1 — Greek's most productive syntactic trick — put an article in front of an adjective, an adverb, a preposition phrase, a να-clause or a quoted word and it becomes a noun: το καλό, το αύριο, τα υπέρ και τα κατά, το να λες ψέματα, το «όχι».