canvases

1. 1
   nounUS

   Plural of canvas.

   Several blank canvases waited on the easels for the morning class.

   The museum stores hundreds of canvases in a climate-controlled vault.

   Note

   An American plural, spelled with a single s, that counts what the cloth becomes: stretched painting surfaces, needlepoint meshes, even screen regions where graphics are drawn. A collector owns canvases and a stitcher buys them. When sailors mean sails in general, they speak of canvas without a count, so the plural rarely appears in that sense.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of canvas.

   Each spring the boatyard canvases the deck to protect it from the weather.

   She canvases the frame tightly before she starts to paint.

   Note

   Here the verb means covering something with canvas, as when a crew canvases a boat or a stack of timber against the weather. Asking for votes or opinions belongs to a different verb, canvass, with a double s. Spelling it canvas in that meaning is obsolete, so a modern writer reporting a survey of residents should write canvasses.

   Before the first frost she canvases the woodpile and weights the edges with stones.

   The crew canvases the deck cargo so the spray cannot reach it.

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