points

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of point.

   The team needed three more points to win the match.

   Her argument rested on two key points.

   Note

   A regular -s plural carries the whole range of the noun point: pinpricks and tiny marks, full stops, decimal points, the vowel and stress marks written above letters in Semitic scripts, and the dots of musical notation. The same spelling is also the verb's present-tense form, so the grammar around it tells you which one you have: "the points" is a noun, but "she points" is a verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of point.

   The signpost points toward the village.

   The evidence points to a single conclusion.

   Note

   This form has the same spelling as the noun plural but does a different job: her points versus she points. Most of the verb's uses are intransitive, so this form usually travels with a preposition or direction word: it points at the door, points north, points to a conclusion. The transitive uses, such as aiming or sharpening, take a direct object instead: he points the gun at the target.

3. 3
   nounCommonwealthIrelandUKplural

   On a railway, the movable rails that can be shifted to send a train from one track onto another.

   Like a switch in a model train set that sends the carriages down a different route.

   A signaller changed the points to divert the express onto the branch line.

   Engineers inspected the points after the derailment near the junction.

   Similarswitch

   Note

   Railway English in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth, and always plural, even for a single set of movable rails. It takes a plural verb: the points were changed, the train ran over the points. Switch names the same piece of track, so the two words are interchangeable in meaning. Points is the word that marks the speaker as using this regional railway vocabulary.

   The points were frozen, so the train could not be switched onto the branch line.

   The driver slowed as the train ran over the points outside the station.

4. 4
   nounplural

   Techniques actors use on stage to add emphasis by exaggerating their speech or movements.

   Like underlining a word three times, but with voice and body instead of a pen.

   The veteran player loaded his soliloquy with theatrical points to win over the gallery.

   Her comic timing came alive through well-placed points that exaggerated every reaction.

   Note

   An actor's term from the nineteenth-century stage, where melodrama encouraged the big, underlined moment. The usual verb is make: an actor makes points, and Amy Lehman (2014) treats making points as a whole acting technique of the period. In this sense the word is plural-only. By 1977 the magazine Drama could speak of what "the old actors called 'points'," which marks it as a period term.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4