canvasses

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of canvass.

   Each volunteer canvasses a different block until every door has been knocked on.

   The pollster canvasses voters across the district in the weeks before the count.

   Note

   Behind the campaign verb sits a rougher past. It once meant to toss someone in a canvas sheet, for fun or as punishment, and more broadly to beat or thrash, and both uses are long obsolete. Today it takes people or places as its object (canvasses voters, canvasses a district) or a question to be examined. In the Philippines it can also mean scrutinizing ballots and rejecting irregular votes.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of canvass.

   Two separate canvasses of public opinion produced strikingly similar results.

   The campaign's weekend canvasses turned up hundreds of undecided voters.

   Note

   Only the countable meanings take a plural. These are solicitations of support, votes or opinions, and, in American usage, the official scrutiny, tally and certification of an election's votes. So several canvasses of the returns can mean several audits rather than several door-knocking drives. The old meaning "rejection," now obsolete, never had a plural because it was uncountable.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of canvas. A less common spelling than canvases.

   The boatyard canvasses the hull each autumn to protect it through the winter.

   He canvasses the wagon frame so the cover stays tight in the wind.

   Note

   Here the verb is about material: covering something with canvas, and it always takes an object, such as a hull, a frame or a deck. To tell it apart from the verb of soliciting votes, look at the object. A surface being covered points to this verb. People, a district or a question being worked over points to the other.

4. 4
   noun

   Plural of canvas. A less common spelling than canvases.

   She stacked her finished canvasses against the studio wall to dry.

   The shipment of blank canvasses arrived torn at the corners.

   Note

   The doubled-s plural is the British spelling for the cloth, and it collides with another word. Spelled this way, the plural of canvas looks exactly like the plural of a solicitation, so "the canvasses" might be paintings or polling drives. Context decides. The two words have crossed before: canvass was once simply a spelling of canvas, and canvas a spelling of canvass.

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