rescues

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular present of rescue.

   The fire crew rescues anyone still trapped inside the building.

   A passing fishing boat regularly rescues sailors stranded near the reef.

   Note

   Every use of this form needs an object: a crew rescues someone, usually from something. The same transitive frame carries the figurative senses and the laboratory one, where a treatment rescues a trait that an experiment had altered or removed. The bare form rescue serves I, you, we and they; only he, she, it or a singular noun takes the -s.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of rescue.

   Mountain rescues often require helicopters and trained search dogs.

   The team logged dozens of rescues over a single busy weekend.

   Note

   A plural that only the countable uses can take: separate episodes of saving, or the special flights an airline sends to bring stranded passengers home. When rescue names the activity in general, as in rescue is slow work, it stays singular. The plural can also mean the rescued themselves, and it shares its spelling with the present-tense verb: the rescues were quick, but she rescues them.

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