Word.ws English Dictionary

ides

/aɪdz/

ides noun: the notional full-moon day of a Roman month, occurring on the 15th day of the four original 31-day months (March, May, Quintilis or July, and October) and on the 13th day of all other months. Also the plural of ide.

Noun (1)

ides (plural ides)

  1. (capitalized, historical, often) The notional full-moon day of a Roman month, occurring on the 15th day of the four original 31-day months (March, May, Quintilis or July, and October) and on the 13th day of all other months.
    • Þa monðas þe habbað iiii nonas æfter kalendas... habbað to idus xiii dagas and to ii kalendas eahtatyne.
      Those months that have 4 nones after the kalends... have 13 days to the ides and eighteen to the second kalends.10th century, Byrhtferð of Ramsey, Enchiridion (Ashmolean MS 328), Book I, Chapter ii, Section 22
    • The Roman Month its several days divides
      By reckoning backwards, Calends, Nones, and Ides.1679, J. Moxon, Mathematics made Easie, page 26

Noun (2) capitalized: IDEs

IDEs

  1. (plural) plural of IDE

Noun (3) capitalized: Ides

Ides (plural Ides)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of ides: the notional full moon of a Roman month, used in Roman dating.

Also used as

ides is also the plural of ide.

Examples of ides in a sentence

  • The third day before the ides of March is March 13th; the third ides of August is August 11th; and the third of the ides of November is November 11th.
  • For the modern reader of Latin the most irritating pecularity of this system of dating is that the days after the Ides of any month carry the name of the following month...1967, Agnes Kirsopp Michels, Calendar of the Roman Republic, page 22:

Forms of ides

pluralides
alternative formId.
alternative formIdes
pluralIdes

Plural of ides: ides

Origin of ides

From Middle English ides, idus, from Anglo-Norman and Old French ides, from Latin īdūs, a fourth-declension plurale tantum, from the Latin practice of treating most recurring calendrical days as plurals. The Latin term is cognate with Oscan eiduis, both perhaps deriving from an unknown Etruscan term. Middle English and Old French also used the singular form ide.

See ide.

Words formed from ides

Words that rhyme with ides

13 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ides

What does ides mean?
Ides means the notional full-moon day of a Roman month, occurring on the 15th day of the four original 31-day months (March, May, Quintilis or July, and October) and on the 13th day of all other months.
How do you use ides in a sentence?
The third day before the ides of March is March 13th; the third ides of August is August 11th; and the third of the ides of November is November 11th.
What part of speech is ides?
Ides is a noun.
How do you pronounce ides?
Ides is pronounced /aɪdz/.
What is the plural of ides?
The plural of ides is ides.

Words near ides in the dictionary

  1. ideotypes
  2. ideotypic
  3. ideoventricular
  4. IDer
  5. IDers
  6. ides
  7. ides of April
  8. ides of March
  9. iDevice
  10. iDevices
  11. ideæ

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ides (page history and authors); IDEs (page history and authors); Ides (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)-Persent101-ides.wav.

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