fills

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of fill.

   The river fills the reservoir during the rainy season.

   A single applicant rarely fills every requirement on the list.

   Note

   The -s form does double duty, because fill works with or without an object. A singular subject can fill something else (the river fills the reservoir), or it can simply become full itself: the hall fills slowly, a room fills with smoke. It also carries the sense of meeting a demand, as when a supplier fills an order. The same spelling serves as the plural noun.

   By eight o'clock the hall fills with smoke and noise.

   The warehouse fills every order within two days.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of fill.

   The engineers compared the different fills used beneath the highway.

   Each of the trench fills had to be compacted before paving began.

   Note

   A plural that earns its keep mostly in the technical senses. These include cheap material packed into empty space during construction, the soil and debris found inside an excavated cut, and an embankment built across a hollow or ravine. Used as a mass noun, fill takes no -s. Fills appears when separate deposits or kinds are being counted or compared, such as the fills of different trenches or the fills beneath a road.

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