surrenders

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of surrender.

   The defeated commander surrenders his troops without further bloodshed.

   Whenever the pressure becomes too great, she surrenders to her doubts.

   Note

   What follows the verb decides which surrender is meant. With an object, someone hands something over: she surrenders her passport. Alone or with a reflexive pronoun, it means giving in: the garrison surrenders, or he surrenders himself to police. With to, the thing yielded to can be a feeling rather than a captor, as in surrenders to despair. At the card table, a player who surrenders gives up the hand and gets back half the bet.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of surrender.

   The treaty recorded a series of surrenders by the defeated cities.

   Historians compared the two surrenders that ended each conflict.

   Note

   Only the countable side of the noun takes a plural. Separate acts of yielding can be counted, like the surrenders of two cities, or in law the surrenders of leases by tenants to their landlords. The uncountable sense of abandonment or resignation stays singular: one speaks of complete surrender, not complete surrenders. The same spelling serves the present-tense verb, so the surrounding words decide which is meant.

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