cells

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of cell.

   Plant cells have rigid walls that animal cells lack.

   The battery's individual cells were wired together in a single pack.

   Note

   A regular plural that serves every room-like meaning of the word at once: hermits' dwellings, the small rooms of monks and nuns, prison cells, the hexagonal compartments of a honeycomb, the working chambers of a living tissue. The same spelling is also the verb's present-tense form. After a determiner or adjective (the cells, prison cells) it is the noun; after a singular subject it is the verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of cell.

   The new facility cells each detainee individually.

   The sheriff cells anyone arrested after midnight in the holding block.

   Note

   Agreement and an object are what this form demands. It needs a singular present-tense subject (she, the facility, the beekeeper) and something being enclosed, because the verb is transitive. Its meaning comes straight from the room senses: to put a person or thing into a cell. It is spelled exactly like the plural noun, and its position right after a subject is what marks it as the verb.

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