bends

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of bend.

   He bends the wire into a neat loop.

   The river bends around the old mill before widening.

   Note

   The -s form works in both directions the verb allows. Someone bends a wire, but the wire itself also bends, and a road bends left without anyone acting on it. The same form also covers stooping and leaning toward something. Whether an object follows the verb is usually what shows which meaning is in play.

   She bends to tie her shoe.

   The road bends sharply after the bridge.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of bend.

   The river has several tight bends before it reaches the sea.

   Cyclists braked hard on the steep bends.

   Note

   A regular plural that covers the countable meanings of bend: curves in a road or river, knots that join the ends of two lines, the diagonal bands of heraldry, and cuts of sole leather. Context does the sorting. Watch the definite article, though. With the, the plural usually means the diver's sickness, a sense that has no singular at all.

3. 3
   nounplural

   Decompression sickness, a disorder caused by dissolved gases forming bubbles in the body when surrounding pressure drops too quickly.

   After ascending too rapidly, the diver developed the bends and needed a recompression chamber.

   Several crew members suffered the bends during the deep salvage operation.

   Note

   Divers' and doctors' shorthand, almost always used with the article. A diver gets the bends, not a bends, and no singular exists for this meaning. Though plural in form, it names a single disorder, and decompression sickness is its formal name. The bubbles behind it are mostly nitrogen, forced out of the blood when pressure falls too quickly.

4. 4
   nouncountableplural

   The thickest and strongest planks running along the sides of a wooden ship, also called wales.

   Shipwrights fitted the bends from seasoned oak to strengthen the hull.

   The vessel's bends had weathered decades of storms without splitting.

   Similarwales

   Note

   A shipwright's word that exists only in the plural: the bends are a set of heavy planks along a wooden hull, never a single one. Wales names the same timbers, and the two terms are interchangeable for an old ship's side. The spelling matches the ordinary plural of a curve, so the setting (hulls, oak, shipyards) tells a reader which is meant.

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