cereal

«cereal» in Mova's school dictionary: A breakfast food made from grains, such as cornflakes… — 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 (cereal, cereals; uncountable for the breakfast food)

meaning for a pupil

1) A breakfast food made from grains, such as cornflakes, oats or puffed rice, often eaten with milk. tree →

2) A cereal is a grass plant whose seeds (grains) we eat, like wheat, rice, maize (corn), oats, barley and rye. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and food lessons, cereals are important crops: bread, pasta, rice and porridge come from them, and they give carbohydrates for energy and fibre. Wholegrain cereals are healthier than sugary ones; check labels. In everyday life, many children eat cereal for breakfast. In maths, cereal boxes appear in nets, volume and weight problems: a 500 g box with 30 g servings has 500 ÷ 30 ≈ 16 servings. Phrases: "a bowl of cereal", "breakfast cereal", "cereal box", "cereal crops", "wholegrain cereal".

examples

• I have a bowl of cereal for breakfast. tree →
• Wheat and rice are cereals. tree →
• This cereal is very sugary, so I only have it on Saturdays. tree →
• The farmer grows cereal crops like barley. tree →
• We made a net of a cereal box in maths. tree →
• Pour the milk on your cereal. tree →
• Oats are a cereal used to make porridge. tree →
• The cereal box says 30 g is one serving. tree →

note

Homophone trap: "cereal" (food) sounds the same as "serial" (in a series, like a serial number or a story in parts). The word comes from Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain. Usually uncountable for breakfast food: "some cereal", "a bowl of cereal".

In the corpora

• Vivid example: in a kitchen in Cork, Mum watches the breakfast show while Oscar eats his cereal.
• Mum opens the cupboard and finds tiny dark droppings like grains of rice and a chewed hole in the cereal packet.
• After dinner you rinse a tin, flatten a cereal box and drop a bottle into the right bin.
• Many breakfast cereals contain a lot of added sugar, which you can see on the label.
• Sugary cereals with cartoon characters are put on low shelves on purpose, at children's eye level.

Trees and pragmatics

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