tosses

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of toss.

   The chef tosses the salad with a light vinaigrette.

   Whenever the dog barks, she tosses it a treat.

   Note

   All the -es marks is agreement with a single third-person subject: the chef tosses, the sea tosses a boat, she tosses old letters. The verb ranges from throwing upward to agitating, harassing and flipping a coin. In the informal "discard" use it is transitive, so tosses always needs an object there: he tosses the receipt, not simply he tosses.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of toss.

   After several tosses, the coin finally came up tails.

   Her practice tosses helped her judge the distance to the basket.

   Note

   The -es ending is the regular one for a noun ending in -ss, and the same spelling also serves the present-tense verb (she tosses). As a plural it counts separate events: throws of a ball, the coin tosses that open cricket and football matches, haughty tosses of the head. It can even count measures of sprats, where it names a quantity rather than a movement.

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