accelerate
part of speech
verb (accelerate, accelerates, accelerated, accelerating)
meaning for a pupil
1) To go faster or to make something go faster: the car accelerated. tree →
2) To make something happen sooner or more quickly: rain accelerated the rusting. tree →
3) (science) To change velocity, which includes speeding up, slowing down or changing direction. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons on forces and motion, an object accelerates when a force acts on it; gravity makes falling things accelerate. In everyday life cars and bikes accelerate; in safety, drivers must not accelerate near schools. Phrases: accelerate away, accelerate quickly, accelerated learning.
examples
- The car accelerated when the light turned green. tree →
- A ball accelerates as it rolls down a slope. tree →
- Pedal harder to accelerate on your bike. tree →
- Warm weather accelerates the growth of mould. tree →
- The rocket accelerated into space. tree →
- A runner accelerates at the start of a race. tree →
- (formal) The plan was accelerated to finish sooner. tree →
note
Spelling: double c, one l: ac-cel-er-ate. Noun: acceleration. Opposite: decelerate (slow down). In maths, speeding up from 10 m/s to 30 m/s means the speed went up by 20 m/s.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «accelerate» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.