Word.ws English Dictionary

licenses

licenses is the plural of license.

licenses is the third-person singular simple present indicative of license.

Meaning of license

Noun

license (countable and uncountable, plural licenses)

  1. (US) A legal document giving official permission to do something; a permit.
    • Hello. I would like to buy a fish licence please.1970, 0:1:15 from the start, in Monty Python's Flying Circus, season 2, episode 10, John Cleese (actor)
  2. (US) The legal terms under which a person is allowed to use a product, especially software.
    • Thus, while the license will grant the user the right to use the software, a major concern is the scope of that use. For example, will the user be granted the right to copy, modify, or transfer the software?1986, Thomas Smedinghoff, The Legal Guide to Developing, Protecting, and Marketing Software, page 166
  3. (US) Freedom to deviate deliberately from normally applicable rules or practices (especially in behaviour or speech).
    • In some instances, the author took license to include events which never happened, or to purposely create events which may run in the face of popular conjecture if the author felt it would help the story along.2012, Chris Seepe, The Conspiracy to Assassinate Jesus Christ, page 5
  4. (US) Excessive freedom; lack of due restraint.
    • I envy not the beast that takes
      ⁠His license in the field of time,
      ⁠Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
      To whom a conscience never wakes; […]1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXVII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 44

See all 9 meanings of license

Phrases with licenses

7 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about licenses

What is licenses the plural of?
Licenses is the plural of license.

Words near licenses in the dictionary

  1. licensees
  2. licenseless
  3. licenselike
  4. licenser
  5. licensers
  6. licenses
  7. licenses to print money
  8. licensing
  9. licensing context
  10. licensing contexts
  11. licensing fee

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: licenses (page history and authors); license (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: “licenses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/licenses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.