grapes

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of grape.

   Heavy clusters of grapes hung from the vines by late August.

   Workers crushed the grapes within hours of the harvest.

   Note

   The plural belongs to the countable grape: the fruit in its bunches, the vines that bear it, and the look-alike fruits of other genera. Where grape is uncountable, it normally stays singular. A dress is deep grape, not grapes, and a cannon loaded with grape fired grapeshot rather than a number of grapes. The same spelling is also a verb form.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of grape.

   Note

   The verb behind this form has an oddly scattered life. On a vineyard it means picking the fruit, and said of livestock it means developing tubercles from tuberculosis. In Northern UK speech it is a form of grope, and in Hong Kong it means to envy, drawn from the idiom sour grapes. Online it also serves as a euphemistic, filter-dodging spelling of rapes, so the context needs to make the meaning unmistakable.

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