wears

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of wear.

   The judge wears a dark robe whenever court is in session.

   Constant friction wears the brake pads down within a few months.

   Note

   One -s form serves both halves of the verb. With an object it means carrying or displaying something: she wears a robe, he wears a frown. Without an object it is copulative and takes an adjective, as in the cuff wears thin, which describes slow deterioration. Between the two sits the sense of tiring someone out, where the object is a person rather than a garment.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of wear, mainly used to count the times a garment is worn.

   The dress already looked tired after just a handful of wears.

   Good leather boots should last for hundreds of wears.

   Note

   A plural the noun rarely needs. Clothing, fashion and the damage that use leaves behind are all uncountable senses of wear, so phrases like "kinds of wear" or "signs of wear" usually read more naturally than "wears". The clearly countable sense is the dated spelling of weir, a barrier across a river. In older texts wears can therefore simply mean weirs.

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