's

Common synonyms include: exist, abide, african-american vernacular english, atomic number 4, be extant, be found.

//s// adv, conj, det, pron, verb, slang

adv, conj, det, pron, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb

1
Contraction of is. abbreviation, alt-of, clitic, contraction
"The dog’s running after me!"
2
Contraction of has. abbreviation, alt-of, clitic, contraction
"The dog’s been chasing the mail carrier again."
3
Contraction of was. Southern-US, abbreviation, alt-of, clitic, contraction, dialectal, proscribed
"It’s a beautiful day yesterday so I’s at the park."
4
Contraction of does, used only with the auxiliary meaning of does and only after interrogative words. abbreviation, alt-of, clitic, contraction, informal
"What’s he do for a living?"

Adverb

1
Contraction of as. UK, abbreviation, alt-of, contraction, dialectal, not-comparable
"He takes his bottle of whisky a day and gets drunk’s a lord in the evening."

Pronoun

1
Contraction of us, found in the formula let's which is used to form first-person plural imperatives. abbreviation, alt-of, clitic, contraction
"What are you guys waiting for? Let’s go!"

Determiner

1
Contraction of his. abbreviation, alt-of, contraction, poetic
"Duncan’s in ’s grave"

Conjunction

1
Contraction of as, when it is (nonstandardly) used as a relative conjunction, or like a relative pronoun, meaning "that". UK, abbreviation, alt-of, contraction, dialectal
"All’s he wanted was to go home."

"The dog’s been chasing the mail carrier again."

Contractions of various words ending in s.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.