cores

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of core.

   The reactor's two cores were shut down for routine maintenance.

   Engineers stressed the processor's individual cores under a heavy workload.

   Note

   Every meaning of core can be counted or used as a mass noun, and this plural appears only when separate centers are being counted: the cores of two apples, the cores of rival clades. A trainer says strengthen your core, not your cores, because the body has just one. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present form. An article or number before it signals the noun: three apple cores.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of core.

   The machine cores hundreds of apples an hour at the cannery.

   She always cores the pears before poaching them in spiced wine.

   Note

   Transitive in every use, so something always follows it. That object may be the fruit being hollowed (she cores the pears), the block a drill passes through, or the ground a sample is drawn from. With a subject before it and an object after, it cannot be mistaken for the plural noun, which usually takes an article or a number in front.

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