inventories

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of inventory.

   Both stores submitted their year-end inventories to the regional office.

   Discrepancies between the two inventories pointed to a counting error.

   Note

   The plural follows the usual pattern for a consonant plus y: the y becomes -ies. It can count any countable kind of inventory: stocks on hand, the detailed lists made of them, or, in linguistics, whole sets of a feature, as when the sound inventories of two languages are compared. The same spelling is also the verb's present form, so the clerk inventories the inventories is grammatical, if clumsy.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of inventory.

   The clerk inventories the back room every Friday afternoon.

   Software now inventories the company's assets automatically each night.

   Note

   Here the word works as a transitive verb. It needs an object, the thing being counted, such as a back room, the stock or a company's assets. Only a singular third-person subject takes this -ies form (she inventories, the software inventories); other subjects use the bare inventory. Position separates it from the plural noun: after a subject it is the verb, and after a word like the or two it is the noun.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2