rents

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of rent.

   Rising rents have pushed many tenants out of the city center.

   The landlord reviews all his rents annually.

   Note

   The countable plural of the payment noun, and it carries every use of the singular. That means what tenants pay, what hiring equipment or a service costs, and the economist's sense of profit drawn from a valuable right, such as a restricted license to trade. In that last use, rents are earnings that flow from holding the right rather than from work. An older sense of plain income or revenue is now obsolete.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of rent.

   My brother rents a studio in the arts district.

   The company rents heavy equipment to construction crews.

   Note

   Only the leasing verb produces this form. Rent is also the past tense and past participle of rend, "tear," but a past form never takes -s, so rents always concerns paying for or granting temporary use. Both directions share the word: a tenant rents a flat from an owner, and an owner rents it out. The granting use, and the intransitive "the flat rents easily," lean informal.

3. 3
   nounslangplural

   Alternative spelling of 'rents.

   The rents want me home by midnight on weekdays.

   My rents finally agreed to help pay for college.

   Note

   Slang for one's parents, made by clipping off the word's first syllable. The fuller spelling 'rents keeps an apostrophe to mark the loss. Written without it, the word looks exactly like the plural of the payment, so context does the work: "my rents" usually means people, not bills. It exists only in the plural, with no singular for a single parent.

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