brick
part of speech
noun (brick, bricks); verb (brick up, bricks, bricked, bricking)
meaning for a pupil
1) A brick is a hard block made of baked clay, used to build walls and houses. tree →
2) Brick is the material: «a brick house». tree →
3) A toy brick is a building block. tree →
4) To brick up a gap is to fill it with bricks. tree →
5) «You're a brick» is an old way to say someone is very kind and helpful. tree →
sense in the lessons
things counted in rows and layers; weight or price of bricks; in history and science: bricks are made from clay fired in a kiln, and building materials are chosen for strength; in stories: the third little pig built his house of bricks; phrases: «brick by brick» (step by step), «a brick wall»
examples
- A wall has 20 rows of 15 bricks. tree →
- Each brick weighs 3 kg. tree →
- He lays 200 bricks an hour. tree →
- How many bricks are left? tree →
- The third little pig built his house of bricks. tree →
- Our school is an old red brick building. tree →
- They built the wall brick by brick. tree →
- The toddler stacked his toy bricks into a tower. tree →
- It was built of red brick, with projecting gables. tree →
note
Rows × bricks per row; rate per hour × hours. Bricks left = bricks at the start − bricks used. Countable: a brick, two bricks; «brick» as material is uncountable (made of brick).
In the corpora
- Since 1958 LEGO bricks have used the same stud-and-tube fit, so very old bricks still click onto new ones.
- Bricks that overlap the joins, like a real brick wall, make a much stronger tower than bricks stacked straight up.
- A missing piece rarely ruins a model: builders swap in another brick, and single pieces can be ordered.
- Some farmers smear fences with chilli and grease or burn chilli bricks, because chilli stings elephants' sensitive trunks.
- Round a bend they see Toad Hall: a grand old red-brick house with lawns down to the water.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «brick» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.