shoes

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of shoe.

   The runners laced up their shoes before the starting gun.

   A row of polished shoes waited by the hotel doors each morning.

   Note

   A regular -s plural today, though English once also had shoon, an older plural that lingered in dialect and poetry into the nineteenth century. The plural covers every kind of shoe the singular names: a farrier's horseshoes, the brake shoes in a wheel, the iron or steel bands fastened under sleigh runners. For footwear the line falls at the ankle. Shoes stop there, and what climbs higher is boots.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of shoe.

   The farrier shoes a dozen horses before noon each market day.

   He carefully shoes the stallion while an assistant holds the reins.

   Note

   The verb shares its spelling with the plural noun but takes a subject and usually an object: a smith shoes a horse. Its commonest use is transitive, fitting horseshoes to an animal, though it can also mean covering an object with a protective layer. Mind the past forms. Both the past tense and the past participle are shod, as in "the mare was shod on Monday."

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