clams

«clams» in Mova's school dictionary: shellfish with two hard shells joined by a hinge, which… — 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 plural (clams; singular a clam); verb (clam up, clams up, clammed up)

meaning for a pupil

1) Clams are shellfish with two hard shells joined by a hinge, which live in sand or mud. tree →

2) Clams are eaten as food, as in clam chowder. tree →

3) To clam up means to suddenly stop talking, often from shyness or fear. tree →

4) (US slang, old) Clams can mean dollars. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, clams are molluscs that filter water to feed; giant clams on coral reefs can be huge. At the beach, kids dig for clams. «Happy as a clam» means very happy (US).

examples

• We dug for clams at low tide. tree →
• Clam chowder is a creamy soup. tree →
• The giant clams on the reef were bigger than me. tree →
• When the teacher asked, he clammed up. tree →
• Clams breathe through gills. tree →
• That bike cost fifty clams! (slang) tree →
• A dish of venison, however, was no unacceptable meal to them, especially after feeding so long on oysters and clams. tree →

note

Singular: clam. Clam up: past «clammed». Myth: giant clams do not trap divers.

In the corpora

• Walruses find clams on the dark seabed with hundreds of sensitive whiskers and suck them out of their shells.
• An octopus is a soft relative of snails and clams, yet it is one of the cleverest animals in the sea.

Trees and pragmatics

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