bend
part of speech
verb (bend, bends, bent, bending); noun (a bend, bends)
meaning for a pupil
1) To bend is to make something curved, not straight. tree →
2) To bend is to lean your body forward or down. tree →
3) A bend is a curve in a road, river or pipe. tree →
4) To bend the rules is to break them a little. tree →
sense in the lessons
a word of the story, sometimes a wire bent into a shape whose length is the perimeter; in science, light bends in water; phrases «bend down», «bend over», «bend the rules», «around the bend»
examples
- He bends a 24 cm wire into a square. tree →
- The road has 3 bends. tree →
- She bent the straw in half. tree →
- How long is each side of the bent wire square? tree →
- Bend your knees when you lift a heavy box. tree →
- She bent down to tie her shoe. tree →
- Drive slowly round the bend. tree →
- A straw looks bent in a glass of water. tree →
- The river bends around the hill. tree →
- Don't bend the rules of the game. tree →
- "Where?" said Woe, bending down; "I can't see a thing." tree →
note
A wire bent into a shape keeps its length: the length is the perimeter. Trap: bending in half makes two parts of half the length. Past form «bent», not «bended». Safety: lift with bent knees and a straight back.
In the corpora
- Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling standing on a scaffold and bending his head back, not lying down.
- When a perching bird bends its legs, tendons pull its toes tight round the branch, so it can sleep without falling off.
- A chimpanzee bends branches into a fresh bed every single night, a bit like making your bed but starting with a tree.
- Muscles can only pull, never push, so they work in pairs: the biceps bends the elbow and the triceps straightens it.
- 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 «bend» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.