birch

«birch» in Mova's school dictionary: A tall thin tree with smooth white or silver bark that… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a birch, birches); adjective (birch)

meaning for a pupil

1) A tall thin tree with smooth white or silver bark that peels in thin layers. tree →

2) The wood of this tree: birch furniture. tree →

3) (old use) A bundle of birch twigs once used to beat people as punishment. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and nature lessons the silver birch is easy to spot by its white bark; it grows in cool places such as Britain, Ireland, Canada and the northern USA. In history it reminds pupils of harsh punishments. Phrases: silver birch, birch bark, birch wood, birch canoe.

examples

• The silver birch has white peeling bark. tree →
• Native Americans made canoes from birch bark. tree →
• We collected birch leaves for our nature table. tree →
• The woods were full of tall birches. tree →
• Birch wood is used for furniture and plywood. tree →
• In old schools children were punished with the birch. tree →
• Whenever the wind blew the Birch-tree creaked. tree →

note

Plural birches (add -es after ch). Do not confuse with "beech", another tree with smooth grey bark.

In the corpora

• Picture a town where nobody has walked for 40 years: birches grow through flats, moss covers the roads.
• Taffy «sat mousy-quiet for ten whole minutes» while her Daddy scratched on birch-bark with a shark's tooth.

Trees and pragmatics

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