floors

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of floor.

   The skyscraper's lower floors house retail shops and cafes.

   Dancers practiced for hours on the studio's sprung floors.

   Note

   Two kinds of count hide in this one plural: surfaces you stand on and levels you climb through. The sprung floors of a dance studio are surfaces, while the lower floors of a skyscraper are stories of the building. Natural settings take the plural too, as in forest floors and ocean floors. The same spelling also serves the verb meaning 'knocks down', so context decides which one is meant.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of floor.

   The champion floors his challenger with a single punch.

   Her blunt honesty floors people who expect polite small talk.

   Note

   The verb nearly always takes a direct object: someone or something gets floored. Its meanings run from the literal to the figurative. A builder floors a room, and a boxer floors an opponent. A sharp retort floors a debater, and startling news floors a listener with surprise. In slang, a driver floors the pedal, pushing it down to accelerate. That use is casual and best kept out of formal writing.

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