Word.ws English Dictionary

cons

/ˈkɑnz/

cons is the plural of con.

cons is the third-person singular simple present indicative of con.

Meaning of con

Noun (1)

con (plural cons)

  1. A disadvantage of something, especially when contrasted with its advantages (pros).
    • pros and cons
    Synonyms:
    disadvantage

Noun (2)

con (plural cons)

  1. (slang) A convicted criminal, a convict.

Noun (3)

con (plural cons)

  1. (informal) A fraud; something carried out with the intention of deceiving, usually for personal, often illegal, gain.
    • My heart is breaking for my sister
      And the con that she called "love"2012, Jeff Bhasker, Nate Ruess, Andrew Dost, Jack Antonoff, “Some Nights”, in Some Nights), performed by fun.

Noun (4)

con (plural cons)

  1. (informal) An organized gathering, such as a convention, conference, or congress.
    • I can't speak for Faye as ed of FHAPA, but it would be really swell of someone could send us a set of Intersection daily newszines, plus any con flyers or other fannish papers that were there to had for the picking up: fannish things, you know, not including media, gaming, filking or costuming...1995 September 4, Lindsay Crawford, “Re: Intersection”, in rec.arts.sf.fandom (Usenet), message-ID <9509042250393785@emerald.com>

Noun (5)

con (plural cons)

  1. (informal) The conversion of part of a building.
    • We're getting a loft con done next year.

Noun (6)

con (uncountable)

  1. (informal, obsolete) Consumption; pulmonary tuberculosis.

See all 14 meanings of con

Noun (1)

cons (plural conses)

  1. A data structure in Lisp that is a pair of pointers, car and cdr, used mainly for lists.
    Synonyms:
    cons cell

Verb

cons (third-person singular simple present conses, present participle consing, simple past and past participle consed)

  1. To obtain a list from a cons or a nesting of conses; to prepend an element to a list by forming a cons of that element and the list; to obtain a list from a smaller one by repeated application of such kind of prepending.
    • This version of length arises naturally from the recursive definition of a list: “a list is either the empty list or an element consed onto another list.”1992, Peter Norvig, Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, Morgan Kaufmann, →ISBN, page 62

Noun (2) capitalized: CONs

CONs

  1. (plural) plural of CON

Synonyms of cons

Forms of cons

Noun
pluralconses
Verb
third-person singular presentconses
present participleconsing
past participleconsed
pastconsed

Origin of cons

Clipping of construct.

Phrases with cons

Words that rhyme with cons

Questions about cons

What does cons mean?
Cons means a data structure in Lisp that is a pair of pointers, car and cdr, used mainly for lists.
What is cons the plural of?
Cons is the plural of con.
What part of speech is cons?
Cons can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cons?
Cons is pronounced /ˈkɑnz/.
What is the plural of cons?
The plural of cons is conses.

Words near cons in the dictionary

  1. Conroys
  2. conrunner
  3. conrunners
  4. Conry
  5. Conrys
  6. cons
  7. cons cell
  8. cons cells
  9. cons.
  10. Cons. Pol.
  11. consalazinic acid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cons (page history and authors); CONs (page history and authors); con (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cons.ogg.

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