Fisherman: Help! There's a beast. I'm trapped on the lake. My boat is stuck. Narrator: Nice use of your nouns there. Beast, lake and boat. How about we expand those noun phrases? Expanded noun ...

Oh, look! There’s some thing sleeping in the trees! Common nouns are the names of things, that’s people, places or objects, while a proper noun is the name of a particular person, place or thing.