Word.ws English Dictionary

hustles

hustles is the plural of hustle.

Meaning of hustle

Noun

hustle (countable and uncountable, plural hustles)

  1. A state of busy activity.
  2. A propensity to work hard and get things done; ability to hustle.
    • 'It's just natural for the folks here to be indolent,' she said. 'They just haven't got any hustle in them.'1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 3, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 26
  3. (preceded by a definite article) A type of disco dance, commonly danced to the Van McCoy song The Hustle (1975).
  4. A scam or swindle.
  5. (slang) An activity, such as prostitution or reselling stolen items, that a prisoner uses to earn money in prison.
  6. (slang) An act of prostitution.
    • Little Joe never once gave it away / Everybody had to pay and pay / A hustle here and a hustle there / New York City's the place1972, Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side”

See all 19 meanings of hustle

Phrases with hustles

Questions about hustles

What is hustles the plural of?
Hustles is the plural of hustle.

Words near hustles in the dictionary

  1. hustlees
  2. hustlement
  3. hustlements
  4. hustler
  5. hustlers
  6. hustles
  7. hustles up
  8. hustlin'
  9. hustling
  10. hustling up
  11. hustlings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hustles (page history and authors); hustle (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-hustles.wav.

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