babel

«babel» in Mova's school dictionary: a story in Genesis where people tried to build a tower up… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (babel — noise); proper noun (Babel — the Tower of Babel)

meaning for a pupil

1) (Bible) The Tower of Babel is a story in Genesis where people tried to build a tower up to heaven; God mixed up their language so they could not understand each other, and they spread over the earth. tree →

2) A babel is a confused noise of many voices talking at once. tree →

sense in the lessons

In RE the Babel story is about pride and about why there are many languages. In everyday writing "a babel of voices" describes a busy market or noisy classroom. Phrases: the Tower of Babel, a babel of voices, a babel of languages.

examples

• The people of Babel wanted a tower that reached the sky. tree →
• God confused their language, and work on the tower stopped. tree →
• The station was a babel of voices in many languages. tree →
• Our classroom became a babel when the teacher left. tree →
• We built a Tower of Babel from paper cups. tree →
• The story of Babel explains why people speak different languages. tree →

note

Capital B for the Bible place; small b for "confused noise". Say "BAY-bul". Not the same as "babble" (to talk fast and foolishly), though they sound alike and the meanings are close.

In the corpora

• The Bible's story of the Tower of Babel was probably inspired by a real ziggurat in Babylon.
• The Babel story explains why people speak different languages.
• Christians see Pentecost, when Jesus' followers were understood in many languages, as the reversal of Babel.
• And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «babel» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.