city
part of speech
noun (city, cities)
meaning for a pupil
1) A city is a very large town where many people live and work. tree →
2) The city can mean the people who live there. tree →
3) In some countries a city is a town that has been given that special title, often because it has a cathedral. tree →
sense in the lessons
a setting; people in a city (large numbers), distances between cities, buses or trains between cities; in geography cities have tall buildings, many roads, offices, museums and parks; in everyday life and safety: busy streets, crossing at lights, public transport; phrases: «city centre» (UK) / «downtown» (US), «capital city», «city hall»
examples
- The city has 45,000 people. tree →
- The two cities are 120 miles apart. tree →
- A train goes from one city to another. tree →
- How far is it to the city? tree →
- London is the capital city of the United Kingdom. tree →
- We visited a museum in the city centre. tree →
- Many people in the city take the bus or the subway to work. tree →
- At night the city lights shine for miles. tree →
- Sydney is the biggest city in Australia. tree →
- “Where is this city?” asked Dorothy. tree →
note
A word of the story; large numbers (thousands) often belong to the population. Trap: a distance «between two cities» is counted once. Plural: cities (y → ies). Size order: village < town < city. A city's name starts with a capital letter.
In the corpora
- Vivid example: in a kitchen in Manchester the six o'clock news shows smoke over a city and the word "missiles".
- Some cities have legal walls, also called free walls, where graffiti is allowed, and the paintings change quickly.
- City animals are wild animals, so watch them, but do not feed, chase or touch them.
- Picture a city garden at midnight: a fox trots past the bins and somewhere a rabbit freezes, then zigzags away.
- Red foxes live on more continents than any other wild meat-eating mammal, and many live in cities such as London.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «city» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.