scales

1. 1
   nounplural

   An instrument used to measure the weight of an object, person, or quantity of material.

   The merchant placed the gold on the scales and recorded its weight.

   Digital scales can measure weight down to a fraction of a gram.

   Similarscale

   Note

   Plural in form even when only one instrument stands on the counter: the butcher puts the sausages on the scales, and they are accurate, not it is. The singular scale names the same device, so either form is correct. What matters is agreement: once you choose the plural, the verb and any pronoun that follow it stay plural too.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of scale.

   Snakes shed their old scales as they grow.

   The two maps were drawn at very different scales.

   Note

   One spelling gathers many unrelated plurals: the musician's scales spanning an octave, the mapmaker's ratios of depicted to actual distance, the numbered sequences used for measurement. The -s is regular throughout, and the same spelling serves the verb, so syntax decides. The scales on two maps is a noun; the climber scales a wall is a verb. Keep it apart from the weighing device, which is plural in form but names a single instrument.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of scale.

   Each spring, the climber scales the north face before the snow melts.

   The chef carefully scales each fish before cooking it.

   Note

   The present-tense form spans several transitive uses and one intransitive one. A climber scales a cliff and a cook scales a fish, each with an object. A process or system, though, simply scales, with no object at all, when it copes with large increases in throughput. It is spelled like the plural noun, but an object after it or a singular subject before it marks it as the verb.

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