dependents
- 1Plural of dependent.
The tax form asks how many dependents you claimed last year.
His employer extended health coverage to all of his dependents.
Note
A regular -s plural, and it belongs only to the noun. The adjective with the same spelling, as in dependent on aid, never takes an ending. The -ent spelling of the noun is the American one. Beyond the people a household supports, grammarians speak of a head and its dependents: the complements, modifiers and determiners that cluster around it in a phrase or clause.
In the phrase the old house on the hill, the noun house is the head and everything else is one of its dependents.
Determiners and adjectives are both dependents of the noun they precede.
dependents is a form of dependent
dependent, noun: Someone who relies on another person to provide for them, especially financially. Full entry
- Forms
- dependentdependents plural
- Spelling
- dependent → dependents: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /s/.
Use it in a sentence
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