sets

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of set.

   The museum displays several tea sets from the eighteenth century.

   Tennis players win matches by taking the most sets.

   Note

   One spelling gathers several unrelated nouns. It can mean nail punches, radios and televisions, or the small bulbs and tubers gardeners plant as onion sets and potato sets. It can also stand for the plural of sett, as in a badger's hole, a pattern of threads, or quarried stones. In a sentence, position tells it apart from the present-tense verb: the sets are ready, but she sets the table.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of set.

   She sets high standards for everyone on the team.

   The jelly sets once it cools in the refrigerator.

   Note

   A verb form whose object does much of the work of meaning: she sets the vase down, sets a stone in a ring, sets a fire, sets the date. The object usually decides which sense the reader hears. One use, fastening something to a spot or making it stick, is dated, so it sounds old-fashioned today. In everyday writing, fixes or pins say the same thing more naturally.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialuncountable

   An informal term for set theory, the branch of mathematics concerned with collections of distinct objects.

   He breezed through calculus but struggled with sets.

   The seminar paired sets with formal logic across the semester.

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