looses

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of loose.

   The archer draws, holds her breath, and looses on the captain's command.

   Each spring the rancher looses the cattle onto the open range.

   Note

   Usually the verb takes an object: a rancher looses cattle, a sailor looses a knot. Two uses can stand alone. An archer simply looses, with no arrow named, and a grip or hold looses when it lets go. Keep it apart from the common misspelling of loses. Looses always means setting something free and never means failing to keep it.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of loose.

   Coaches review the slowed footage of elite archers' looses frame by frame.

   Across the whole tournament, his cleanest looses came in the final round.

   Note

   The plural belongs above all to archery: several releases of the bowstring, counted and compared one by one. It fits the countable meanings of loose, a release, a discharge or a letting go. The meanings that name a state rather than an event, such as freedom from restraint, the obsolete sense of laxity, or open play away from scrums and line-outs, rarely call for a plural.

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