recruits

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of recruit.

   The sergeant assigned the fresh recruits to separate barracks.

   Several recruits washed out before the final fitness test.

   Note

   The plural carries every life the noun has led. Besides fresh soldiers and new hires, recruits in population biology are individuals that have reached adult or breeding age, as in a season's recruits to a population. An older use treats a recruit as a supply that makes good a loss, close to reinforcement. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb: the army recruits, and the recruits arrive.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of recruit.

   The startup aggressively recruits engineers from rival firms.

   Each fall the navy recruits thousands of young men and women.

   Note

   Usually transitive, with the people taken in as the object: a firm recruits engineers. Two uses take no object at all. In ecology, a young animal recruits when it reaches breeding age. In dated usage, a convalescent recruits by regaining health and spirits. Medicine has its own transitive use, in which the body recruits leucocytes or proteins to act in a particular region. The archaic sense of replenishing supplies belongs to older prose.

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