英語における「Content」と「Contents」

‘Content’ vs. ‘contents’ in English Tip: Are you a non-native English speaker ? I have just finished creating a Web App for people who enjoy learning by reading . Make sure to check it out; there's a lot of free content. The distinction between content and contents is a bit tricky. First of all, “content” can be a noun (pronounced / ˈkɒntɛnt / in British English and / ˈkɑːntɛnt / in American English), an adjective, or a verb (both pronounced / kənˈtɛnt /; note the stress placement). Let’s deal with the adjective and the verb first. As an adjective , “content” means “happy”, “satisfied”. Since the plural of an adjective in English is the same as its singular, it can never be “contents” in this case. For example: He has a great job and a beautiful wife. I think he is content with his life. As a verb , “content oneself with something” means “to accept and be satisfied with something and not try to have something better”. Just like with all other verbs, to form the third person singular of this verb, we add an “s”, making the form “contents” possible: I wanted a new PC but had to content myself with a new hard drive because the whole PC was too expensive. She could hire someone to wash the dishes in her restaurant, but she contents herself with doing it without anyone’s help. Finally, as a noun , “content” and its plural “contents” have several meanings. In the singular, “content” usually refers to: The entirety of information contained in something. The story of a novel or the subject of an illustration can be called their “content”. Just like “information”, content is always uncountable when used in this sense. The word is most commonly used in reference to the content of a website, as in, Most websites contain mostly ads with very little content. The amount of a substance contained in something else. It may be either countable or uncountable . We can speak of “salt content” or “fat content” in foods, “alcohol content” in drinks, and so on, e.g. Bacon has (a) very high salt content. In the plural, “contents” refer to the things contained in something: In a concrete sense. We can speak of the “contents of a bag”, “contents of a bottle”, “contents of the stomach”, etc., for instance, He dropped a bottle and spilled its contents all over the floor. In an abstract sense. Traditionally, pieces of information contained in a written document are called its “contents”. You may say, She has lost the letter and remained unaware of its contents. Using the singular “content” in this case is becoming increasingly more common but is still considered wrong by many. The distinction is rather subtle; if you consider the contents of a document to be separate pieces of information, you should use “contents” (which is usually the case with a letter). If you refer to them as a whole, you should use “content” — it makes more sense to say that “the book contains violent content” than “the book contains violent contents”. By the way, have you already seen my brand new web app for non-native speakers of English ? It's based on reading texts and learning by having all meanings, pronunciations, grammar forms etc. easily accessible. It looks like this: 0 Facebook Email Twitter Reddit Follow me to get updates and engage in a discussion Use the image You can use the image on another website, provided that you link to the source article . If you share it on Twitter or Facebook , I kindly ask you to tag my profile @JakubMarian . If you share it on reddit , please, share a link to the whole article and give credit to my subreddit r/JakubMarian in the comments.