bamboo

«bamboo» in Mova's school dictionary: a very tall, fast-growing plant, a kind of giant grass… — 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 (bamboo — uncountable; a bamboo, bamboos for kinds)

meaning for a pupil

1) Bamboo is a very tall, fast-growing plant, a kind of giant grass, with hard hollow stems divided into sections. tree →

2) Bamboo is also the strong, light material made from those stems, used for building, furniture, fishing rods and even toothbrushes. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons bamboo comes up as the food of giant pandas and as one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth — some kinds grow almost a metre in a single day. In design and technology and in lessons about the environment, bamboo is a sustainable material because it grows back quickly. In Asian stories and art, bamboo is a sign of strength because it bends in the wind but does not break.

examples

• Pandas eat bamboo almost all day. tree →
• Bamboo is a kind of giant grass. tree →
• Some bamboo can grow very fast in a single day. tree →
• We grew beans up bamboo canes in the school garden. tree →
• My new toothbrush is made of bamboo. tree →
• The bamboo stem is hollow inside. tree →
• The bamboo bent in the storm but did not snap. tree →
• They built a raft from bamboo poles. tree →
• Long, long ago, there lived an old bamboo wood-cutter. tree →

note

Usually uncountable: «some bamboo», «a bamboo cane», «a bamboo forest». Bamboo is a grass, not a tree, even though it can be as tall as a tree. Spelling: double «o» at the end.

In the corpora

• Plants grow mainly at the tips of their shoots and roots, and some bamboos can grow nearly a metre in a day.
• Bamboo flowers and dies all at once every few decades, so pandas need several kinds of bamboo nearby.
• Bamboo has little goodness, so pandas must eat a lot and rest to save energy.
• Its hollow stems with solid joints are strong and light, so Hong Kong builders still tie bamboo poles into scaffolding round skyscrapers.
• Bamboo stems are hollow with solid joints, which makes them strong and light, and bamboo bends without breaking and grows back quickly.

Trees and pragmatics

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