somethings

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of something.

   She brought home a bag of small somethings for the kids.

   The shelf was cluttered with dusty old somethings nobody wanted to claim.

   Note

   The placeholder habit of the stand-in verb, applied to objects. These are things whose nature is not yet defined, or whose name has slipped away. As a plural they become countable and take adjectives freely: small somethings, dusty old somethings. The word can also point back to an item mentioned earlier only as "something", turning the vague pronoun into a noun that can be counted.

2. 2
   verbcolloquial

   Third-person singular simple present of something.

   She somethings the report each morning before anyone else arrives.

   Every weekend he somethings around the garden until it gets dark.

   Note

   A stand-in verb for an action the speaker has forgotten, never knew, or does not care to name. Think of the gap left when the words of a song slip away. Because it takes the regular -s ending, the sentence stays grammatical while the meaning stays blank. It belongs to casual speech. In careful writing, find the real verb instead.

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