arguments

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of argument.

   The lawyer delivered her closing arguments to a silent jury.

   Both arguments rested on evidence that later proved unreliable.

   Note

   One plural serves several quite different nouns. Arguments can be the reasons offered for a claim, the reasoned cases built from premises toward a conclusion, plain quarrels, or the short summaries set before a poem, book or chapter. Context usually settles which is meant: a lawyer's closing arguments are cases, not fights. When argument means reasoning in general, it is uncountable and takes no plural.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of argument. Obsolete.

   Note

   A verb form from a usage that has died out. Argument as a verb once meant to argue, or to bring forward evidence and proof, and both uses are now obsolete. The first was nonstandard even in its day. The ending is the regular one (she arguments, like she argues). A modern writer would choose argues, and arguments in present-day prose is almost always the plural noun.

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