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I'm looking for the name for the class of nouns that describe things whose quantity is continuous rather than discrete.
For example, "cream", "water", "fire" are all nouns in this set. In contrast, "sheep", "atoms" and "axes" are not.
The word that I am looking for would differentiate between when you say "so much" and "so many". You say "so much" for nouns in the class I'm talking about, and "so many" for those that aren't.
Countable or count noun versus uncountable (or mass noun) does the job.
In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a numeral and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that co-occurs with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties. It can't be modified by a numeral, occur in singular/plural, or co-occur with quantificational determiners.
