shades

1. 1
   nouncolloquialplural

   Sunglasses; tinted glasses worn to shield the eyes from bright sunlight or glare.

   He pushed his shades up onto his forehead as he stepped into the shop.

   A pair of mirrored shades hid the driver's eyes from the glare off the road.

   Similarsunglasses

   Note

   Like glasses and trousers, this word exists only in the plural. It takes a plural verb (his shades are by a famous designer), and a single item is counted as a pair of shades. It belongs to casual speech and to fashion writing, where it sits comfortably beside the plainer sunglasses.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of shade.

   The walls were painted in soft shades of gray and cream.

   Autumn turned the hillside into a patchwork of red and orange shades.

   Note

   The plural belongs only to the countable senses of shade: window blinds, varieties of a color, fine distinctions of meaning. The darkness cast by a tree is uncountable, so you sit in the shade, never in the shades. One plural use is a set phrase: shades of something names an aspect that recalls it. The same spelling also serves the casual word for sunglasses and the verb form.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of shade.

   The old oak tree shades half the yard through the summer months.

   She shades the lower edge of the drawing with light pencil strokes.

   Note

   Most uses take an object: a tree shades a yard, an artist shades a sketch. One runs without an object. A color that shades into another approaches it by slow degrees, as blue shades into green. In every sense the form pairs with he, she, it or a singular noun. Plural subjects take the bare shade.

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