types

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of type.

   Doctors check for different blood types before a transfusion.

   The museum displays several types of ancient pottery.

   Note

   The plural belongs to the countable meanings: kinds and classes (blood types, types of pottery), people who typify a profession, or specimens that anchor a scientific name. Printing is the exception worth knowing. There, type for the letters taken together is uncountable, so a printer sets type, not types. The plural appears only when individual pieces or separate sets of different fonts are being counted.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of type.

   The clerk types each report before filing it away.

   Whenever she calls, she types up the meeting notes immediately afterward.

   Note

   Spelled exactly like the noun plural, so only the sentence tells them apart: "the lab types each sample" is a verb, while "the lab records blood types" is a noun. The everyday verb is keyboard work, often followed by up (she types up the notes). The same form also serves a laboratory determining a blood type, someone sorting things into categories, and the learned sense of prefiguring something by a symbol.

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