cans

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of can.

   The pantry was lined with cans of beans and tomatoes.

   Workers loaded thousands of cans onto the delivery truck.

   Note

   The ordinary -s plural covers every container the noun names: tins of food, watering cans, and the archaic chamber pot. The same spelling serves the verb of preserving food, and the sentence tells them apart. In cans of beans the word heads a noun phrase, while in she cans beans it follows a subject. Mind the slang too: older US slang used can for a toilet, and vulgar North American slang uses it for the buttocks.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of can.

   The cannery cans thousands of pounds of salmon each season.

   My grandmother cans vegetables from her garden every fall.

   Note

   Only the food-preserving verb takes this ending. The modal can (know how, be able, be permitted) is defective and never adds -s, so we say she can swim, never she cans swim. Any cans after a singular subject is therefore the lexical verb, as in the fish factory cans the sardines and mackerel. It is spelled like the plural of the container but usually has the food being preserved as its object.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialcountable

   Headphones, especially the large over-the-ear kind favored by DJs and audio engineers.

   The engineer adjusted his cans and listened for distortion in the mix.

   Slip on a decent pair of cans and the background noise disappears.

   Similarheadphones

4. 4
   nounslangvulgarcountable

   Vulgar slang for a woman's breasts.

   The tabloid headline crudely referred to the actress's cans.

   He muttered something about her cans and earned a furious glare.

   Similarboobs, tits

   Note

   A coarse word that belongs only among people who share the joke, and it is out of place almost anywhere else. It treats a woman's body as an object, so it reads as leering rather than descriptive, and in writing it signals deliberate crudeness. The container noun has a second body-part sense in vulgar North American slang, the buttocks, so this joke runs through the word.

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