jackets

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of jacket.

   Several jackets were left behind in the coat room after the party.

   The tailor pressed all the jackets before the shipment went out.

   Note

   A regular plural that covers an unusually wide range of things: coats on a rack, the paper covers of books, the casings around bullets or hot-water tanks, the bands that reinforce a gun tube, the tough skins of baked potatoes. In slang, a person's jackets are their police records. The same spelling also serves the verb meaning 'covers in a jacket', so the surrounding grammar has to tell you which one you are reading.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of jacket.

   The factory jackets each pipe with foam insulation before installation.

   The binder jackets every report in a stiff cover for the archive.

   Note

   Here the noun has turned into an action. Whoever jackets something wraps it in a protective or insulating layer, as a factory does with pipes or a binder with reports, and the verb almost always takes a direct object. A narrower use means putting someone into a straitjacket. You can tell it from the plural noun by its position: it follows a singular subject and comes before an object.

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