fours

Fours is the plural form of the number four and is used to denote a group, set, or collection that contains four items. In everyday language, it appears whenever people discuss quantities or refer to multiple instances of the same item arranged in fours, such as four apples, four people, or four distinct objects sharing a property. The term is also used in more formal or technical contexts to indicate a quartet of elements that are treated as a unit.

In games and cards, fours often refers to the four cards that share the rank four in a standard deck. In discussion of poker hands, the phrase four of a kind can be described as “the fours” when focusing specifically on the four cards that show the rank four. The plural form is used when talking about multiple copies of that rank across different hands or games.

In sports, particularly rowing, fours denotes a boat or crew of four rowers. A four can be coxed (with a coxswain) or coxless. The plural form “fours” is used when referring to the boat class or to a race in which such boats compete. Similar naming conventions appear in other team sports that organize events around groups of four participants.

Other uses include mathematics and enumeration, where fours may reference sets of four elements or repeated instances of the number four within a list. The term thus serves as a versatile plural for various four-element groupings across different domains.

Etymology: Four derives from Old English feower; the plural form fours follows the regular pattern for English nouns. See also Four (disambiguation) for related senses of the root number.