frauds

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of fraud.

   Investigators uncovered several frauds involving forged invoices.

   The self-proclaimed experts were dismissed as frauds once their credentials were checked.

   Note

   Only the countable uses of fraud take a plural. Fraud as the crime itself is a mass noun (charged with fraud), so frauds always means separate things: individual schemes or deceptions, or the people who carry them out, as in exposed as frauds. An older meaning, a trap or snare, is obsolete, so in modern prose frauds names either deeds or deceivers, and context decides which.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Third-person singular simple present of fraud. The verb is obsolete.

   Note

   A verb form that has outlived its verb. Fraud meaning "to defraud" is obsolete, and current English uses defraud instead (she defrauds investors). The old verb was transitive, with the victim as its object. Because the spelling matches the plural noun, a sentence like he frauds investors will strike most modern readers as old-fashioned or mistaken. In careful writing, prefer defrauds.

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