bounces

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of bounce.

   The ball bounces twice before she catches it.

   Light bounces off the polished mirror at a sharp angle.

   Note

   The form the verb takes after he, she, it or a singular noun. It works with or without an object: the ball bounces, but she bounces the ball. In the colloquial sense of trying out an idea, a particle follows, usually off: she bounces ideas off her team. That construction tests an idea by its echo, much as a ball comes back from a wall.

   She bounces every new idea off her editor before writing a word.

   He bounces the ball against the wall until dinner.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of bounce.

   The gymnast counted her bounces on the trampoline as she warmed up.

   The basketball lost energy with each of its successive bounces.

   Note

   The plural counts separate events: the bounces of a ball, a gymnast's bounces on a trampoline. When the noun names the motion in general rather than single instances, it stays uncountable and takes no plural. Email has given the form a busy technical life, where bounces are messages returned undelivered. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb, so after a subject it is usually the verb.

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