exiles

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of exile.

   The exiles settled in cities far from the regimes that had banished them.

   Political exiles often build tight-knit communities abroad.

   Note

   Only the countable noun takes this plural. It counts the people banished from home or country, not the banishment itself. The condition stays singular: a regime sends dissidents into exile, never into exiles. So the exiles of a regime always means persons. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb. The noun names who is sent away; the verb names the sending.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of exile.

   The new regime exiles every journalist who questions its authority.

   A court that exiles offenders rather than jailing them follows an ancient tradition.

   Note

   Here the form is a transitive verb, so it always needs an object naming who or what is sent away: the regime exiles its critics, not simply the regime exiles. That object need not be a person, since the verb can banish things too. This form appears only in the active present with a singular subject. The passive switches to exiled (he is exiled), leaving exiles free to look like the plural noun.

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