comprehensives
- 1Plural of comprehensive. In the UK, state secondary schools that admit students of all abilities.
The city's comprehensives admit students of all abilities without entrance exams.
The council plans to merge two struggling comprehensives into a single larger school.
Note
A plural that only the schools can have. British English shortened comprehensive school to comprehensive, and that noun takes a regular -s. The adjective, meaning broad or thorough, never takes an ending. So the -s always signals schools: two local comprehensives, but a comprehensive survey. Because the noun is British usage, the plural belongs to talk of the British school system.
comprehensives is a form of comprehensive
comprehensive, noun: A state-funded secondary school in Britain that admits students of all abilities without selection by examination. Full entry
- Forms
- comprehensivecomprehensives plural
- Spelling
- comprehensive → comprehensives: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with comprehensives, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.