adults

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of adult.

   The ticket price is higher for adults than for children.

   Several adults volunteered to chaperone the school trip.

   Note

   The plural is regular: add -s to adult, whether the grown-ups in question are people past the legal age of majority or full-grown animals. The same spelling also serves as the slang verb form (she adults). The two are easy to tell apart. After an article or a number it is the noun (the adults, three adults), and after a singular subject it is the verb.

2. 2
   verbinformal

   Third-person singular simple present of adult.

   He adults surprisingly well for someone barely out of college.

   Whenever the bills arrive, she quietly adults and sorts everything out.

   Note

   Here the noun has been turned into a verb, and the register matters. To adult, meaning 'to behave like an adult', is slang and intransitive, so it takes no object: she adults, not she adults the bills. A rarer, nonstandard use means to make someone, or become, an adult. Keep it for playful, informal writing. In formal prose, behaves like an adult is the safer choice.

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