windows

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of window.

   Rain streaked down the windows during the long afternoon.

   The architect lined the south wall with floor-to-ceiling windows.

   Note

   One spelling serves two words here: the plural noun and the verb's present-tense form. As a plural it carries every sense of window, not only glass in a wall. It covers shop windows, the brief windows of time in which something becomes possible, and the windows a story opens onto another life. A determiner or number in front (the windows, three windows) marks it as the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of window.

   Note

   The verb keeps close to the noun's glass. An architect windows a wall, and a boutique windows its new stock by setting it behind the pane. Signal processing has its own use: an engineer windows a signal by applying a window function to it. All of these senses are transitive, so this form always takes an object, and what follows names the thing fitted, displayed or processed.

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