fours
- 1Plural of four.
The dice came up showing a pair of fours.
The soldiers marched in fours down the parade ground.
Note
A regular -s plural that follows the numeral into each of its noun uses: figures written on a page, lengths of four units, several four-year-olds, a team's power forwards, or a batsman's tally of boundaries in cricket, where each four is worth four runs. Context, not spelling, tells these apart. The specialized plural-only words, such as the poker pair, belong to particular settings.
- 2In poker and similar card games, a pair of cards both ranked four.
He bluffed his way to the pot while holding only fours.
A quiet pair of fours rarely wins a big hand.
Note
Card-table slang that drops the words "a pair of": holding fours means holding two of them. In this use the word is plural-only, so the hand has no singular form, and it takes a plural verb. Away from the table the bare word reads as the ordinary plural, so this meaning depends on a poker setting.
- 3In British prison slang, the prison cells located on the third floor of a wing.
He spent his first month on the fours before being transferred to another wing.
Word about the lockdown spread quickly through the fours.
Note
The number runs one ahead of the floor. In British counting the third floor is the fourth level above the ground, and the cells there take their name from that tally. The word is plural-only and usually comes with the article, as in "on the fours" or "through the fours." It is insiders' talk, so in writing it signals a prison voice rather than neutral description.
Less common meaning
- 4Stocks or bonds that yield interest at a rate of four percent.
Her late father had left her a tidy holding of fours.
The broker advised moving out of fours into something with a higher yield.
Note
Older market shorthand named a holding by its rate of return, and this is an example: fours paid four percent. The word is plural-only and archaic, and it fits naturally in period writing about inheritances and brokers. A present-day reader would expect a phrase like four-percent bonds instead. Using the bare word today sounds deliberately old-fashioned.
fours is a form of four
four, noun: The written figure or digit 4, or an instance of it appearing somewhere. Full entry
- Forms
- fourfours plural
- Spelling
- four → fours: add -s
Practice
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