fines

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of fine.

   Drivers who run red lights face steep fines.

   The court waived the unpaid fines after she completed community service.

   Note

   One spelling covers several unrelated nouns. The plural can mean penalties for breaking the law, glasses of French brandy, or forfeits drunk in a drinking game. It can also mean the obsolete payments a tenant made at the start of a tenancy to keep the rent nominal. Only the dust-and-grit meaning lives mostly in the plural. Context, not form, tells the others apart.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of fine.

   The city fines residents who fail to shovel their sidewalks.

   The league fines any coach who criticizes the officials publicly.

   Note

   The -s form serves more than the verb of penalties. A brewer fines beer, clarifying it by filtration. In a dated use, something fines away, fines down or fines off, gradually dwindling to nothing; this use always takes one of those particles. In the penalty sense, the object is the person punished: the league fines the coach, not the offense.

3. 3
   noun

   The smallest particles of a material, whether or not they are suspended in the air.

   Washing the gravel removed most of the fines clinging to each stone.

   Operators wore masks because the grinding released clouds of fines.

   Similardust, particulates, silt, powder

   Note

   A working word for the smallest size fraction of a crushed, milled or washed material, kept apart from the coarser grades. Gravel is washed to strip the fines off, and grinding throws them into the air. The noun comes from the adjective and is normally plural, so speakers rarely call one particle "a fine." The cereal-box crumbs are the same idea brought to the breakfast table.

4. 4
   noun

   The small particles of cereal that collect at the bottom of a cereal box.

   By the end of the week only fines were left in the box.

   He shook the fines onto his yogurt rather than throw them out.

   Similarcrumbs, dust

Showing meanings only. Show all 4