roses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of rose.

   The florist arranged two dozen roses into a single bouquet.

   Wild roses grew thick along the quiet country lane.

   Note

   The everyday plural covers both the plants and their blooms. A gardener prunes roses, and a florist sells them by the dozen. Because rose can name the Rosa shrub, a single flower, or anything shaped like one, roses can stretch to flower-like shapes too. Do not confuse it with the poetic verb form, which shares the spelling but means reddens or perfumes.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of rose.

   Note

   A poetic verb form, and it always takes an object: dawn roses the sky, wind roses the cheeks. It belongs to a lyric register and means flushing something with color, or perfuming it as roses would. Don't look for rise here. Rose as the past tense of rise has no -s form, so roses never means "rises".

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