Word.ws English Dictionary

does

/dəz/UK/dəʊz/

does is the third-person singular simple present indicative of do.

does is the plural of doe.

Meaning of do

Verb

do (third-person singular simple present does, present participle doing, simple past did, past participle done)

  1. (auxiliary) A syntactic marker in a question whose main verb is not another auxiliary verb or be.
    • Do you go there often?
  2. (auxiliary) A syntactic marker in negations with the indicative and imperative moods.
    • I do not go there often.
  3. (auxiliary) A syntactic marker for emphasis with the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods.
    • But I do go sometimes.
  4. (auxiliary, pro-verb) A syntactic marker that refers back to an earlier verb and allows the speaker to avoid repeating the verb; in most dialects, not used with auxiliaries such as be, though it can be in AAVE.
    • I play tennis; she does too.
  5. (auxiliary, informal, interrogative, modal) Should; ought to (especially in respect of a task to be repeated).
    • Do I just call every number on the list each time?
    Synonyms:
    should
  6. (auxiliary, dialectal) Used to form the present progressive of verbs.
    • ...An' the dogs do bark, an' the rooks be a-vled to the elems high and dark, an' the water do roar at mill.1844, William Barnes, “Evenén in the Village”, in Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect

See all 49 meanings of do

Meaning of doe

Noun

doe (countable and uncountable, plural doe or does)

  1. A female deer; also used of similar animals such as antelope (less commonly a goat, as nanny is also used).
    • A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
      Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
      She saw them in their field, they her in hers.1923 October, Robert Frost, “[Grace Notes.] Two Look at Two.”, in New Hampshire […], New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →OCLC, page 95
    Synonyms:
    hind
  2. (specifically) A female fallow deer.
  3. A female rabbit or hare.
  4. A female squirrel.
  5. A female kangaroo.
    Synonyms:
    blue flyer

See all 6 meanings of doe

Proper noun capitalized: Does

Does

  1. (plural) plural of Doe

Forms of does

alternative pronunciation-spellingduz
alternative form (archaic)doth
alternative form (archaic)doeth
alternative Northumbria (dialectal)diz
alternative form (colloquial)'s

Origin of does

From Middle English dos, variant of doth, doþ, equivalent to do + -s. For the shortened vowel compare says.

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Phrases with does

158 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with does

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about does

What is does the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Does is the third-person singular simple present indicative of do.
What part of speech is does?
Does is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce does?
Does is pronounced /dəz/.

Words near does in the dictionary

  1. Doerr
  2. Doerrs
  3. doers
  4. doership
  5. doerships
  6. does
  7. does a bear crap in the woods
  8. does a bear poop in the woods
  9. does a bear shit in the woods
  10. does a bit of stiff
  11. does a Bradbury

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: does (page history and authors); Does (page history and authors); do (page history and authors); doe (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-does-todo.ogg.

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