parades

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of parade.

   The festival featured marching bands and parades for three straight days.

   Military parades drew large crowds to the capital each year.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs here: the same letters also serve as the verb form, so the parades and she parades are told apart only by the words around them. As a plural it covers processions, military reviews, and the uncommon collective use for geese or elephants on the move, as in two parades of goslings. Only countable uses take the plural; where parade works as a mass noun, it stays singular.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of parade.

   The general parades his troops before the visiting dignitaries.

   Every spring the town parades its champions down the main street.

   Note

   A singular present that moves easily between two constructions. Without an object, someone parades past, or parades up and down to be seen. With one, a band parades the main street, marching along it, or a slow line parades through a crowd. The word just before it shows which use it is: a subject such as he, she or the town marks it as a verb, not the plural noun.

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