collapses

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of collapse.

   The tent collapses the moment the support pole is removed.

   A runner sometimes collapses from exhaustion before reaching the finish line.

   Note

   A present-tense form that works both with and without an object. Without one, a structure, system or person gives way on its own: the roof collapses, the economy collapses. With one, someone brings about the folding or hiding. A user collapses a folder in a directory tree, and a camper collapses a tent for packing. The transitive computing use is the one newer readers most often meet in software menus.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of collapse.

   Repeated market collapses wiped out the family's savings over a decade.

   Engineers studied several tunnel collapses to find a common cause.

   Note

   The countable side of a noun that also works as a mass noun. A single failure is a collapse, and repeated failures become collapses. The same plural also covers the cricket sense, short for batting collapse, as in a team's run of collapses. The spelling is shared with the present-tense verb, and a preceding article, number or adjective is what marks the noun.

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