knows

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of know.

   The teacher knows each student by name within a week.

   Nobody knows what caused the power outage last night.

   Note

   Every sense of the verb passes through this form, so it takes all the verb's constructions: a that-clause (she knows that it's late), a direct object (he knows the city), or no object at all (nobody knows). The archaic, euphemistic sexual sense is now usually spelled out as knows biblically. The same spelling also serves the nonstandard all-persons form and the rare plural noun.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of know.

   Note

   A plural is unusual for a noun that mostly names knowledge as an uncountable state, and that noun now survives chiefly in the fixed phrase in the know. Phrases like firm knows set against maybes stretch it into a count noun. The countable sense with a natural plural is really another word: know as a spelling of knowe, "hill, knoll", so knows can also mean hills.

3. 3
   verbnonstandardtransitive

   In nonstandard or dialectal English, the present-tense form of know used across all persons, singular and plural, where standard usage alternates between know and knows.

   I knows every shortcut through these hills, sir.

   They knows the river better than any map could show.

   Note

   Here the verb levels to a single form, so I, you, we and they take the -s that standard grammar keeps for he, she and it: I knows just what they knows. It belongs to speech and to dialogue that renders a speaker's voice. In standard writing it reads as an error, so use it only to quote or characterize someone.

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