projects

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of project.

   The engineering team juggled several projects at once.

   Government projects often take years to complete.

   Note

   A regular plural that carries every meaning of the singular noun. It covers planned undertakings and, in dated use, idle schemes that were never practical. American sports talk adds raw recruits a team hopes to develop. Housing is the exception: that meaning lives almost entirely in the plural, which is why the housing sense stands on its own.

2. 2
   nounUSplural

   Government-funded, high-density urban housing developments built for residents with low incomes.

   He spent his teenage years in the projects before moving downtown.

   Crime rates in the projects dropped after the new community center opened.

   Similarestates

   Note

   An American word that nearly always comes with the article: people live in the projects, grow up in the projects, are from the projects. The singular a project can name one such building, but the neighborhood as a whole is plural. "From the projects" can work as a statement of identity. Donovan Simmons and Terry Moses's Bloods and Crips (2008) uses it to mark someone as belonging to a side, whether or not he joined a gang.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of project.

   The analyst projects steady growth over the next decade.

   A skilled speaker projects her voice to the back of the room.

   Note

   The -s form of a verb that works both with and without an object. Without one it describes a shape: a ledge projects over the street. With one it can cast an image, forecast a figure, or convey an impression. Used reflexively, it says how someone presents themselves, as in he projects himself as a reformer. The same spelling is also the plural noun, so context decides which is meant.

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