tall
part of speech
adjective (tall, taller, tallest)
meaning for a pupil
1) Tall means high from the bottom to the top: a giraffe is very tall. tree →
2) Tall is used to give height: he is 150 cm tall. tree →
3) A tall story (tall tale) is one that is hard to believe. tree →
4) In informal speech, "tall" can be short for "at all", as in "not saying anything at all". tree →
sense in the lessons
In the Tanakh and Jewish tradition: It describes giant peoples like the Anakim, whose size frightened the Israelites. Interpretation: The spies' fear of the tall Anakim is read as lack of faith. Tradition teaches that God overcame such peoples for Israel. In the primary lessons: Maths: height measures and comparisons (how tall, taller than, the tallest); ordering by height; bar graphs of heights. Science: the tallest animals, trees and buildings. Everyday: «stand tall» (be proud and brave).
examples
- The Emim dwelt therein aforetime, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim; (Torah DEU.2.10, JPS 1917) tree →
- a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead; (Torah DEU.2.21, JPS 1917) tree →
- a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say: 'Who can stand before the sons of Anak?' (Torah DEU.9.2, JPS 1917) tree →
- Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation tall and of glossy skin, to a people terrible from their beginning onward; a nation that is sturdy and treadeth down, whose land the rivers divide! (Prophets ISA.18.2, JPS 1917) tree →
- The tree is 12 meters tall. tree →
- Tom is 5 cm taller than Ben. tree →
- Who is the tallest? tree →
- How tall is the tower? tree →
- Giraffes are the tallest animals on Earth. tree →
- Line up from shortest to tallest. tree →
- Grandpa told a tall story about a fish as big as a boat. tree →
- Sunflowers can grow taller than a man. tree →
note
Comparative taller, superlative tallest. «Taller than» compares heights: add the difference to get the taller one. Trap: «Ben is 5 cm shorter than Tom» means subtract from Tom, even though no «taller» appears. Use «tall» for people, trees and buildings; «high» for mountains and things far above the ground.
In the corpora
- The Emim dwelt therein aforetime, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim;
- The Mona Lisa is about 77 centimetres tall and 53 centimetres wide; Guernica is almost 8 metres wide.
- Long legs let cranes wade in marshes and tall grass, and a long bill probes the mud for food.
- Buttress roots spread out like walls around many rainforest trees and hold the tall tree up in thin soil.
- Wheat is a tall grass whose seeds, the grains, are ground into flour.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «tall» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.