hails

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of hail.

   The captain hails the approaching ship over the radio.

   Our new neighbor hails from Brazil.

   Note

   One spelling serves two kinds of meaning. In the weather senses the subject is often the empty it, as in "it hails most afternoons," and the verb takes no object. Things can also hail down in rapid succession, like blows or debris. In the transitive senses someone does the greeting, naming or calling: she hails a taxi, and the press hails him a hero.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of hail.

   Successive hails of gunfire forced the patrol to take cover behind the wall.

   The crowd hurled hails of insults at the departing official.

   Note

   Only the countable uses of the noun take a plural. The ice itself is uncountable, so a plural counts something separate: two storms in one week are two hails, and repeated volleys of gunfire, stones or insults are hails of them. The spelling is shared with the present-tense verb, which carries both the weather meanings and the greeting ones.

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