sevens
- 1Plural of seven.
Gamblers love a row of lucky sevens on the slot machine.
The page was covered with sloppy sevens that looked almost like ones.
Note
An ordinary -s plural that follows every countable meaning of seven: written digits, cards bearing seven pips, and, in slang, servings of the soft drink 7 Up. The same spelling also names the seven-a-side rugby game and a poker pair. Those senses are fixed nouns with no singular, so context tells you whether sevens means 'several sevens' or names a game or a hand.
- 2A variant of rugby union played with seven players per side over shorter matches on a full-size field.
Fiji dominated international sevens for much of the last decade.
The team switched from fifteens to sevens for the Olympic season.
Note
Rugby names its formats by head count. Sevens sits beside fifteens, the full-sided game, and the fuller name is rugby sevens. In this sense the word has no singular: nobody plays a seven. It works as the name of the sport and often modifies another noun, as in international sevens, a sevens tournament, or a sevens squad.
- 3A pair of seven-rank cards held in a hand of poker or another card game.
He slow-played his sevens and trapped the aggressive raiser.
Calling a big raise with sevens felt risky, but she trusted her read.
Note
Poker talk names a pair by the bare plural of its rank, so sevens means exactly two sevens in the hand, not any number of them. It is table slang, at home in phrases like slow-played his sevens or called with sevens. In more careful writing, 'a pair of sevens' is clearer, and it avoids confusion with the everyday plural, which can mean any count.
sevens is a form of seven
seven, noun: The figure 7, or any single instance of that digit as it appears in writing. Full entry
- Forms
- sevensevens plural
- Spelling
- seven → sevens: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of sevens apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.