issues

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of issue.

   The committee debated a long list of unresolved issues.

   Collectors prize the earliest issues of that comic series.

   Note

   A plural that does its most common work in the modern senses: the unresolved points of a debate, or the successive editions of a magazine or comic. The older sense of offspring seldom needs the -s, because issue there already means one child or several. In that sense, a person's issue is all their children taken together.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of issue.

   The court issues its rulings on Friday mornings.

   Water issues from the spring even during the driest months.

   Note

   The -s form carries two quite different uses under one spelling. Transitively, an authority issues something, such as a ruling or a statement. Intransitively, something issues from a source, as water from a spring or troops sallying out, and an affair issues in a result. Watch the preposition: from marks where it starts, in marks how it ends. The archaic "end up as" use has faded.

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