whites

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of white.

   She prefers crisp whites to heavy reds at dinner.

   Fold the beaten egg whites gently into the batter.

   Note

   An ordinary plural that picks up whichever countable meaning of white is in play. It can mean whites and reds on a wine list, whites as butterflies of the subfamily Pierinae, or whites as people of European descent. White bread, which is uncountable, normally does not take it. Keep it apart from the word for white clothing, which exists only in the plural and has no singular behind it.

2. 2
   nounplural

   Bedding, shirts, and other white fabric, usually laundered as a single load to avoid color transfer.

   He separates the whites from the colors before doing the laundry.

   A stray red sock in with the whites turned everything pink.

   Oppositecolors, darks

3. 3
   nounplural

   A matching set of white clothing, especially one worn as a uniform.

   All the recruits lined up in spotless whites for inspection.

   He kept his whites clean throughout the long ceremony.

   Note

   A noun with no singular: a person wears whites, never a white, and the verb agrees in the plural (his whites were spotless). It most often follows in, as in Anthony Burgess's Beds in the East (1959): "in soiled whites." The particular uniforms that grew from it, the chef's and the cricketer's, keep the same grammar.

4. 4
   nounplural

   The traditional white clothing worn by cricket players, including a collared shirt, long pants, and sometimes a sweater.

   She walked onto the pitch in her whites, bat in hand.

   Grass stains were hard to scrub out of the players' whites.

   Similarflannels

   Note

   Cricket has its own version of the word, and it carries the game's tradition with it. Whites remain the conventional dress for Test and first-class matches. Limited-overs competitions have moved to brightly colored kit, so playing in whites can point to the longer format as much as to the clothing.

5. 5
   nounplural

   The white jacket, pants, and apron forming a chef's professional uniform.

   He buttoned up his whites and stepped into the busy kitchen.

   A good cook keeps spare whites on hand in case of spills.

6. 6
   nounUSplural

   The all-white dress uniform that officers of the United States Marine Corps used to wear.

   The lieutenant saluted smartly, his whites gleaming in the summer sun.

   Officers donned their whites for the change-of-command ceremony.

   Note

   A term from American military dress that now describes the past. These white uniforms belonged to commissioned officers of the Marine Corps. They were worn on ceremonial and warm-weather occasions until changes to regulation dress retired them, so present-day use of this sense is mostly retrospective.

7. 7
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of white.

   Note

   The verb behind this form always takes an object: someone whites a wall, a ceiling, or a boundary line, in the sense of whitening or bleaching it. Its spelling is identical to the plural noun, so "the painter whites" can briefly read as a noun phrase. The object that follows settles which word it is.

8. 8
   nouncolloquialplural

   An informal term for leukorrhea: a whitish discharge from the vagina.

   She visited the clinic complaining of persistent whites.

   Folk remedies once promised to cure the whites.

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