puppies

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of puppy.

   The shelter found homes for all twelve puppies by the end of the month.

   Two puppies chewed through the leg of the kitchen table.

   Note

   The everyday plural follows the usual spelling rule that turns a consonant plus -y into -ies. It covers young rats and seals as well as young dogs, and loosely any dog at all. Watch it in casual talk: the slang use for a woman's breasts normally appears in this plural, so context has to separate the two. The same spelling also serves the verb of giving birth.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of puppy.

   The breeder notes the date each female puppies so the litters can be tracked.

   When the shepherd's dog puppies, the flock goes unguarded for a day.

   Note

   A verb of birth, used of the mother: the bitch puppies. It can also take an object, the young themselves, so a female may be said to puppy a litter. It is spelled exactly like the everyday plural, and only its place in the sentence tells them apart. As the verb it follows a subject; as the noun it follows a number or an article.

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   Plural of puppie.

   Note

   A spelling that has vanished in the singular but survives unseen in the plural. Puppie, an obsolete form of puppy, makes puppies just as the modern word does, so in an older text the plural gives nothing away. Only a singular puppie marks the old spelling. For a modern reader the meaning is simply that of the everyday plural.

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