dues
- 1Regular fees paid to remain a member of a club, union, or organization.
The union collects dues from every worker at the start of each month.
He let his dues lapse and was quietly dropped from the club roster.
Similarfees, subscription
Note
Here the word exists only in the plural: no one pays a single due to a club. It takes plural agreement (the dues are paid, the dues have gone up). It is reckoned by period rather than by item, as in monthly dues or a year's dues. Ask how much the dues are, never how much the due is.
- 2Plural of due.
Union dues are taken straight out of each paycheck.
He paid his dues for years in small clubs before the band finally made it.
Note
Only the noun due has a plural. The adjective, meaning owed or appropriate, never takes an -s. What gets pluralized is the sense of things owed or claimed by right: debts, obligations, the acknowledgment a person has earned. One meaning of due has moved almost entirely into this form, and in everyday use dues most often means membership fees.
dues is a form of due
due, noun: A fee paid by a member to belong to an organization, usually charged at regular intervals. Full entry
- Forms
- duedues plural
- Spelling
- due → dues: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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