guns

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of gun.

   The museum displayed antique guns from the Civil War era.

   Several guns were confiscated at the border checkpoint.

   Note

   A regular plural, but the word it pluralizes covers a wide range: pistols, rifles and shotguns, and also cannon. In artillery, guns are long-barreled pieces firing at a low angle with high muzzle velocity, which sets them apart from howitzers and mortars. The same spelling serves the present-tense verb and the word for arm muscles, so context decides which is meant.

2. 2
   nounslangcountableplural

   The muscles of a person's upper arms, especially the biceps and triceps, when they are big and well developed.

   After a year at the gym, he loved flexing his guns at the beach.

   Sleeveless shirts let her show off the guns she had worked so hard for.

   Similarbiceps, pythons

   Note

   Gym slang that exists only in the plural. You flex your guns, never a single gun. Fitness magazines use it freely: Men's Health in 2005 urged readers to roll up their sleeves and "unveil some powerful guns." Lifters also size them in inches around the arm. Pythons is a rival slang term for the same muscles. Biceps is the safer word anywhere outside the gym.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of gun.

   The driver guns the motor whenever the open road allows it.

   He guns his motorcycle through the empty intersection.

   Note

   The -s form is regular, but the participle doubles the n: gunning. That matters for meaning, because several senses of the verb live mostly in that participle. Hunters go gunning, and a rival is gunning for you. Guns on its own therefore leans toward the driving sense, as in she guns the engine. The other senses rarely turn up in this form.

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