Word.ws English Dictionary

refrains

refrains is the plural of refrain.

refrains is the third-person singular simple present indicative of refrain.

Meaning of refrain

Noun

refrain (plural refrains)

  1. The chorus or burden of a song repeated at the end of each verse or stanza.
    • For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of...1949, George Orwell, chapter 1, in Nineteen Eighty-Four
  2. (broadly) A much repeated comment, complaint, or saying.
    Synonyms:
    old saw

See all 7 meanings of refrain

Questions about refrains

What is refrains the plural of?
Refrains is the plural of refrain.

Words near refrains in the dictionary

  1. refraineth
  2. refraining
  3. refrainings
  4. refrainment
  5. refrainments
  6. refrains
  7. reframe
  8. reframed
  9. reframer
  10. reframers
  11. reframes

Source and license

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