beetle
part of speech
noun (beetle, beetles); verb (beetle off — hurry away, rare)
meaning for a pupil
1) A beetle is an insect with a hard shiny back. Like all insects it has 6 legs. tree →
2) The hard back is really a pair of wing cases that cover thin wings, so most beetles can fly. tree →
3) There are more kinds of beetle than of any other animal. tree →
sense in the lessons
In school maths: a counted animal with 6 legs, used in legs puzzles (beetles and spiders). In science: insects have 6 legs, 3 body parts and often wings; ladybirds (ladybugs) are beetles; beetles help break down dead plants. In stories and everyday life: finding beetles under logs, a bug hunt. Phrases: «a dung beetle», «a stag beetle», «busy as a beetle».
examples
- A beetle has 6 legs. tree →
- Spiders and beetles have 54 legs in all. tree →
- Tom found 7 beetles in the garden. tree →
- How many legs do 4 beetles have? tree →
- A ladybird is a kind of beetle. tree →
- We went on a bug hunt and found three beetles under a log. tree →
- The dung beetle rolls a ball of dung. tree →
- The beetle opened its shell and flew away. tree →
- The Beetle smote upon the drum. tree →
note
Countable: «a beetle». A beetle is an insect; a spider is not. Maths: hides «6 legs each». Trap: the number 6 is not written; a spider has 8, a beetle 6.
In the corpora
- The bombardier beetle mixes two chemicals in its body to make a spray of about 100 degrees that it shoots from its tail end.
- No real animal breathes fire; the bombardier beetle sprays a nearly boiling chemical mix from a tough chamber at attackers.
- When researchers sprayed a harmless mist into single canopy trees, beetles of hundreds of kinds fell out, many never named.
- Beetles are insects with six legs; beetles that live under stones help to break down dead plants and animals.
- Roughly one animal kind in four is a beetle.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «beetle» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.