colons
- 1Plural of colon.
Editors often strip unnecessary colons from cluttered sentences.
The textbook included diagrams of human colons at several stages of digestion.
Note
One plain -s serves several unrelated nouns: punctuation marks, rhetorical clauses that are grammatically but not logically complete, the measured lines of ancient manuscripts, and segments of the large intestine. Only context tells them apart. In anatomy the colon is the largest part of the large intestine, so casual speech often uses it for the whole organ, though a precise writer keeps the two distinct.
colons is a form of colon
colon, noun: The punctuation mark written ⟨:⟩, formed by two dots placed one above the other. Full entry
- Spelling
- colon → colons: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with colons, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.