ball

«ball» in Mova's school dictionary: a round thing used in games, for throwing, kicking… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (ball, balls)

meaning for a pupil

1) A ball is a round thing used in games, for throwing, kicking, hitting or bouncing. tree →

2) A ball is anything round, like a ball of wool or a snowball. tree →

3) A ball is a big formal dance party. tree →

4) The ball of the foot is the round part under the toes. tree →

sense in the lessons

a thing counted; balls in boxes, bags or teams; in geometry a sphere; phrases «play ball», «on the ball» (quick to notice), «have a ball» (have great fun), «snowball», «ball game»

examples

• He has 12 tennis balls. tree →
• Each can holds 3 balls. tree →
• She lost 4 balls. tree →
• The coach bought 6 balls for 5 dollars each. tree →
• Kick the ball to me! tree →
• She rolled the clay into a ball. tree →
• Cinderella went to the ball. tree →
• We had a ball at the party. tree →
• A ball is shaped like a sphere. tree →
• Don't chase a ball onto the road. tree →

note

Just a thing counted. Trap: «a can of 3 balls» means 3 balls per can. «Ball» (dance) and «bawl» (cry loudly) sound the same. Safety: never run onto a road after a ball.

In the corpora

• Big cats play with balls, ropes and barrels, especially young ones, because play trains the moves they need for hunting.
• Pufferfish swallow water fast to blow up into a prickly ball, and many also have strong poison.
• Many zoos have stopped tricks like ball balancing and show natural behaviour instead.
• Think of an owl pellet on a classroom table: a ball of fur and tiny bones the owl coughed up, not poo.
• Running makes a dog want to chase, just as a ball rolling away does.

Trees and pragmatics

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