clam
part of speech
noun (a clam, clams); verb (clam up, clams up, clammed up, clamming up)
meaning for a pupil
1) A clam is a sea or river animal with a soft body inside two hard shells joined by a hinge; it lives buried in sand or mud. tree →
2) Clams are also eaten as seafood. tree →
3) To clam up means to suddenly stop talking, often because you are nervous or do not want to tell. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons, clams are molluscs, like snails and mussels; they filter tiny food from water; the giant clam on coral reefs can be bigger than a child. In stories and everyday life, someone who «clams up» goes quiet when asked questions. «Happy as a clam» (US) means very happy. Phrases: «clam chowder», «giant clam», «clam up», «shut like a clam».
examples
- We found an empty clam shell on the beach. tree →
- Clams dig into the sand when the tide goes out. tree →
- The giant clam lives on coral reefs. tree →
- Dad ordered clam chowder at the restaurant. tree →
- When the teacher asked who broke it, Sam clammed up. tree →
- She shut her mouth like a clam and said nothing. tree →
note
Verb forms double the m: «clammed», «clamming». Do not confuse with «clammy» (cold and slightly wet: clammy hands). A clam is a mollusc, not a fish.
In the corpora
- Walruses find clams on the dark seabed with hundreds of sensitive whiskers and suck them out of their shells.
- A clam from Iceland named Ming lived about five hundred and seven years, worked out by counting the growth rings on its shell.
- An octopus is a soft relative of snails and clams, yet it is one of the cleverest animals in the sea.
- The tuskfish carries a clam in its mouth and smashes it on a rock, using the rock as an anvil.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «clam» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.