defaults

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of default.

   The new operating system ships with privacy-friendly defaults.

   A wave of mortgage defaults shook the housing market that year.

   Note

   A plural that splits cleanly by field. In finance it counts separate failures to pay, as in a wave of loan defaults. In computing it names a set of preset values, as in restore the defaults. Only the countable uses take the plural; the condition itself stays singular, as in a borrower in default. Before another noun the singular does the work: default settings, never defaults settings.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of default.

   When a borrower defaults, the lender may seize the collateral.

   The program defaults to the last saved file each time it opens.

   Note

   Most of its uses stand alone, with no object. A borrower defaults, a defendant defaults by not answering a summons, and a team defaults by never taking the field. The computing use behaves differently because it names a target, as in the program defaults to the last saved file, and it can even take an object. This echoes the split between failure and preset value in the plural noun.

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