Word.ws English Dictionary

cattles

cattles is the plural of cattle.

cattles is the third-person singular simple present indicative of cattle.

Meaning of cattle

Noun

cattle pl (normally plural, singular cattle)

  1. (plural, plural-normally) Domesticated animals of the species Bos taurus (cows, bulls, steers, oxen etc), and other hoofed mammals of the genus Bos.
    • Many cattle were suffering from a disease called BSE.
  2. (plural, plural-normally) Certain other livestock, such as sheep, pigs or goats. Also rarely applied to horses.
    • Mr. Jos had hired a pair of horses for his open carriage, with which cattle, and the smart London vehicle, he made a very tolerable figure in the drives about Brussels.1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 29, in Vanity Fair, page 246
  3. (derogatory, figuratively, plural, plural-normally) People who resemble domesticated bovine animals in behavior or destiny.
    • "Come, that will do," interrupted Joolby with an impatient growl; "talk, talk, talk—that's all it ever comes to with your kind of cattle. Do you still think that you are playing at charades, girl? […]"1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London
  4. (English, countable, obsolete, plural, plural-normally, sometimes) chattel
    • goods and cattle
  5. (plural, plural-normally, rare, uncountable) Used in restricted contexts to refer to the meat derived from cattle.
    • The temptation of a lone white man was too great for any gathering of myall-natives, and sheep-fat and cattle-steak seemed there for the spearing, so that a stockman always ran the risk of attack, especially if his shepherds interfered with the native women.a. 1964, Stephen Henry Roberts, The Squatting Age in Australia, 1835-1847, Melbourne University Press, published 1964, page 315

See all 6 meanings of cattle

Phrases with cattles

Questions about cattles

What is cattles the plural of?
Cattles is the plural of cattle.

Words near cattles in the dictionary

  1. cattlepost
  2. cattleposts
  3. cattleprod
  4. cattleprods
  5. cattleproof
  6. cattles
  7. cattles up
  8. cattleshed
  9. cattlesheds
  10. cattlewealth
  11. cattlewoman

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cattles (page history and authors); cattle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cattles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cattles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.