targets

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of target.

   Reconnaissance flights identified several military targets along the coast.

   The committee revised its emissions targets after the new data arrived.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty here: the same form is also the verb's present tense, as in the charity targets families. As a plural noun it carries every sense of target: marks shot at, goals set, and people or things that draw attack or ridicule. Older uses name small shields. The modifier usually tells them apart: emissions targets are aims, military targets are objects of attack.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of target.

   The charity targets families living below the poverty line.

   This vaccine targets the most common strains circulating each winter.

   Note

   A transitive verb, so what is aimed at follows directly as the object: the charity targets families, not targets at families. The same form spans three fields of aiming: a weapon at a mark, a product or message at an audience, and, in computing, compiled code at a platform it is built to run on. The spelling it shares with the plural noun rarely confuses, because the verb always has a subject before it and an object after.

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