turtles

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of turtle.

   Sea turtles return to the same beach where they hatched to lay their eggs.

   The pond was home to dozens of turtles by midsummer.

   Note

   A regular plural, but what it counts depends on where it is read. In American and Canadian English turtles can be any shelled reptile, land-dwelling ones included. British and Australian usage keeps the word for the marine kind. The same plural also covers classroom drawing robots and their on-screen cursors. It shares its spelling with the present-tense verb: the turtles swim, but the kayak turtles.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of turtle.

   If the dinghy turtles in heavy surf, the crew has to right it from underneath.

   In every online match, my brother turtles behind his walls until his army is too big to stop.

   Note

   A verb that rarely takes an object: a boat turtles, traffic turtles along, a cautious player turtles behind defenses. Its meanings range from capsizing and swimming upside down to crawling slowly, hunting turtles, or building up a defense instead of attacking. Because the senses are so different, the words that follow usually show which one is meant. "Turtles along" means slowness, and "turtles in the surf" means a capsize.

3. 3
   nounslangUKcountable

   A slang term for gloves, used chiefly in British English.

   She kept a spare pair of turtles in her coat pocket for the walk home.

   The market trader blew on his hands, wishing he'd brought a thicker pair of turtles.

   Similargloves

   Note

   Rhyming slang at work: gloves rhymes with turtle doves, and then the rhyming half is dropped. That leaves turtles to carry the meaning on its own, with nothing in the word itself pointing to hands. It belongs to British slang. Outside that setting it is likely to be heard as the reptiles, so the frame "a pair of turtles" does much of the work of making it clear.

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