fakes

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of fake.

   The auction house withdrew three lots after appraisers flagged them as fakes.

   Among the seized goods, investigators counted dozens of fakes.

   Note

   One plural serves several quite different nouns. Most often it means things that are not genuine, but on the field fakes are feints meant to wrong-foot a defender, and on deck they are the single turns of a coiled cable or hawser. An older, now archaic use made a fake a trick or swindle. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so the sentence around it decides which is meant.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of fake.

   Whenever a hard question comes up, he fakes confidence to buy time.

   The striker fakes a pass and slips the ball past the defender.

   Note

   The -s form that agrees with he, she, it or a singular noun carries every verb meaning of fake. Most take an object (he fakes a signature, she fakes surprise), but in jazz a player can simply fake, improvising with no object at all. On a ship, a sailor fakes a line by laying it in zigzag or figure-eight layers so it runs out without twisting. Unlike the plural noun, it always has a subject in front of it.

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