houses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of house.

   Many of the old houses in the village have thatched roofs.

   Rising prices have made houses harder to afford for young families.

   Note

   The plural covers only the countable uses of house: dwellings, single-family homes as opposed to apartments, the Hong Kong estate blocks, containers, and households. The uncountable sense of housing in general, meaning its size and quality, has no plural. Use housing there, not houses. The same spelling also serves the verb meaning 'to contain', as in a museum that houses a collection.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of house.

   The museum houses one of the largest coin collections in the country.

   A single server houses all of the company's customer records.

   Note

   Nearly always transitive, so an object follows. A museum houses a collection, and a casing houses mechanical parts. An intransitive use also exists, meaning to lodge or take shelter, and there nothing follows the verb. In speech the verb's stem ends in a voiced /z/ (/haʊz/), unlike the /s/ of the singular noun house (/haʊs/).

Showing meanings only. Show all 2